Psychological Dimension of Infertility: Anxiety and Depression in Close Focus

Abstract:Psychological Dimension of Infertility: Anxiety and Depression in Close Focus.

INTRODUCTION

The question of studying emotional and cognitive paradigm for integrative understanding of infertility is fundamental for the twenty–first century society. Infertility comes in so many different forms and manifests itself through many unique emotions. Furthermore, not only through many unique emotions, but also through emotional spectrums which significantly affect the life of the person, who experiences this medical disease.

Emotions unite and divide the worlds in which we live, both personal and global, motivating the best or the worst of us. There are core emotions, like anger, joy and sadness, which when experienced viscerally lead to a sense of relief and clarity (even if they are initially unpleasant). And there are inhibitory emotions, like shame, guilt and anxiety, which serve to block you from experiencing core emotions.

Emotions are constantly bringing different perspectives to bear life–altering situations, but we don’t become emotional about everything; we are not in the grip of emotion all the time. Emotions come and go. We feel an emotion one moment and may not feel any emotion at another moment].

We can also become emotional when remembering a past emotional scene. We may choose to remember the scene, reworking it in our mind, going over it to figure out what happened, or why it happened, or how we might have acted differently. Or, the memory may not be a choice; it may be unbidden, popping into our mind. Regardless of how the memory begins, whether by choice or unbidden, it may include from the start not just the scene and the script of what transpired emotionally, but an emotional reaction.

Representing the short overview of infertility–related emotional dimensions, we would like to emphasize that the basic constituent of any infertility–related emotional state is a thought and its cognitive interpretation in negative or neutral dimension. Thought is a catalyst of infertility–related nervousness, which turns into anxiety or depression.

What follows is a list of top seven signs of infertility–related anxiety or infertility–related depression

(1) All your thoughts are focused closely on the infertility issue. You can’t concentrate on anything else

Are you a beautiful woman in cream–coloured sweater, standing and holding your head, feeling excessively depressed and anxious because of infertility? Or maybe you are a handsome man in stylish jeans and shirt, sitting on floor with your head on your hands, feeling mortally hurt or worthless? Do you recognize yourself behind these metaphoric ‘silhouettes’?

Infertility is still a taboo discussion. It causes many marriages to break up and creates a sense of isolation, anger and loss of self–worth. Many couples feel deeply frustrated and embarrassed about their inability to get pregnant because of veiled criticism, which can entail them in the future. If you’ve ever experienced infertility, you can understand the incredibly complex and maddening emotions that accompany the condition.

Negative emotions are constantly inspired by your obsessive thoughts about what is wrong with you and why still you don’t have a baby or you are extremely confused by the thought that infertility is the greatest thing that could have ever happened to you? And every time the thought appears into your mind, it touches a nerve of your too delicate problem: what is wrong with me or what I have done wrong/why such consequences entail me at the present time and what consequences will be entailed by the treatment [in my future]? What if failure would happen? What if everything would be just a waste of time?

Having a frustrated dream of embracing a charming baby cuddled up to you and sleeping, you feel yourself like a bundle of nerves, but still trying to cope with your infertility–related nervous breakdown.Emotional exasperation is constantly interfering with your daily life and it is almost impossible to understand where is the reality and where is your imagination: there is no clear correlation between the reality and your imagination, because every day you are even more dreadfully fond of having a baby. You are continuously trying to numb your emotions, but nothing can help you, because only a thought of having a wonderful baby with languorous dark–blue eyes cuddled against you sparkles so many emotions within you. Everything that you are doing now, you envisioned being with your baby. That missing line means that no one else is inside of you, and it essentially feels as though you have failed again and again. The thought that you could never have a baby made you re–evaluate every aspect of your life. You are no longer living your life with aspirations of being able to provide a better future for someone else. Strong desire of having a baby is always in your thoughts, every single minute you are sitting alone, sipping a cup of cappuccino or hurrying up somewhere, it effects every decision you make, every conversation you hold with somebody, everything you glance admiringly/furtively/indignantly at, everything you listen to, everything you try to understand – all aspects of your life you are associating with you or with you, your fiancé/fiancée [your husband or wife] and your baby.

Despite this incredibly personal and overwhelming challenge that one in eight couples face, people around you have not changed their rhetoric and probably, will have never change it. Not everyone would understand your infertility and would stop saying things you wish he/she would stop saying. Not everyone would watch, with greater attention, every single word going past his/her lips. The simple questions asked with intriguing smile: ‘Do you have a baby?’; ‘Why don’t you have a baby?’; ‘It is high time you should think about having a baby’; ‘’, etc. in fact, are downright hurtful.

If you are continuously asked such personal questions you shouldn’t be surprised why all your thoughts are focused on yourself and your infertility trying to establisha correlation and not evidence of causation, necessarily, but a notable phenomenon nonetheless. Starting from infancy, ‘should’ and their categories pile up in our heads, and it isn’t always transparently clear where they came from. Any given should is most likely just a vivid memory of a memory of something somebody said to you, but should you accept somebody’s words as a moral paradigm worth to follow or should you follow your own moral paradigm depends on your choice. You’rescared that you spent too much time letting yourself be defined by what other people thought of you and your infertility, instead of what you thought of yourself. Being scared means you are concerned enough to realize that there might be something wrong, that there might be something worth fixing. It means strength, not weakness. Admit it, you’re scared. But know you’re not the only one.

You couldn’t compile the right words for yourself to understand your own thoughts and actions, feeling defeated and broken in a sense, could you? Do you have trouble concentrating or remembering things?

Are you constantly wondering what is wrong with you and why don’t you have a baby yet?

Are you continuously criticizing yourself for being unable to get pregnant?

Are you always frustrated by the thought of not having a baby? How often do you burst into tears thinking about this? How often do you expect that your nerves will soon disappear but nothing happens and you are even more nervous than you were yesterday/ the day before yesterday/last week/last month/last year?

Do you struggle with highly distressing emotions, such as extreme frustration, utter despair, profound sorrow, or with suicidal thoughts? And after that do you feel guilty or ashamed about being so emotionally overwhelmed?

Essentially, it feels like being uncaptured into a vicious circle of thoughts, emotions, feelings and actions. Instead of ignoring repressed negative emotions, inspired by your negative thoughts, accept them. Consciousness of how you are feeling without rushing to change your emotional state. The best solution would be to breathe slowly and deeply while learning to tolerate strong feelings or to imagine the feelings as blossomed flowers, which appear from their buds and after that fade and fall, as a reminder that they will pass. A thought is just a thought and a feeling is just a feeling, nothing more.

All your thoughts explicate the only one question: why me and what should I do with infertility?

– You are surfing through Internet, collecting the information about infertility [What is the essence of infertility? What causes infertility? How to diagnose infertility? When is the right time to see a fertility expert? What is infertility diagnostic testing? How to choose the top city’s fertility clinic? How to choose the top fertility specialist? etc.];

– You are focused on analyzing the recent scientific researches about all possible treatment options and their essence [What to expect from the fertility treatment’s cycle? How it would affect the whole life? What are the most common emotional responses during a treatment cycle? Are there any strategies for coping with a fertility treatment cycle?];

– You are a confused woman, who searches the internet for books to read about infertility, and blogs, where numerous articles about this delicate theme are represented or even just an article related to the psychological side effects that take place as these decisions are made alone;

– You are thinking about fertility clinics, you are googling the successful rates and compare the results;

– You may struggle to think about anything else besides your fertility struggles. You’re probably thinking, “How can I not think of infertility all the time, if I do want to have a baby?” etc.

Struggling to get pregnant can be a frustrating experience, and the questions that can go through your mind can be unnerving. Especially during treatments or fertility testing, it’s normal to have infertility at the front of your mind, because perceiving a treatment cycle as moderately to very stressful. The first cycle of any type of treatment is usually the most stressful, with subsequent cycles of that same treatment often feeling more manageable. If you’re giving yourself injections and going in for ultrasounds, again, it’s no surprise that your thoughts will frequently be focused on medical treatment, BUT IF NOT –– YOU SHOULD SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT WITH A COUNSELING SPECIALIST TO COPE WITH INFERTILITY–RELATED NEGATIVE THOUGHTS.

Are you a gorgeous golden–haired woman with tears into your eyes covering your face by both hands sitting silently on the sofa near the fertility expert’s closed office door, deeply embarrassed to be here or are you a young stylish in appearance black–haired man who is also sitting there profoundly ashamed to be there? Do you recognize yourself behind these metaphoric ‘silhouettes’ for guilt?

Emotions unfold on a timeline. The timeline begins with a trigger that initiates an emotional experience and ultimately results in a response. Awareness of emotions means understanding how they are triggered, what they feel like and how we respond. Awareness itself is a strategy, it helps to understand the essence of the emotional experiences.

We don’t become emotional about everything; we are not in the grip of emotion all the time. Emotions come and go. We feel an emotion one moment and may not feel any emotion at another moment. We can also become emotional when remembering a past emotional scene. We may choose to remember the scene, reworking it in our mind, going over it to figure out what happened, or why it happened, or how we might have acted differently. Or, the memory may not be a choice; it may be unbidden, popping into our mind. Regardless of how the memory begins, whether by choice or unbidden, it may include from the start not just the scene and the script of what transpired emotionally, but an emotional reaction.

What is vital for you to know that regardless of whatever you feel at any given time, your feelings are valid and moreover, your feelings have an impact on your mental health, physical health and behavioral patterns.

It is only the truth, a fact of life. When you are struggling with infertility, you experience a huge spectrum of negative emotions, which correlate with your cognition and change your emotional–cognitive paradigm through thoughts.

Thoughts about infertility felt quite embarrassed whenever you are thinking or talking about it. Your thoughts control what you feel. You may end up losing yourself to what you thought was real, even if it’s temporary. Whatever feelings you need to feel to navigate through the pain, let yourself embrace them. Let yourself feel. Let yourself experience every single emotion. Let yourself experience all emotional spectrums. Let yourself breathe. Let yourself be vulnerable. Let yourself be strong. Let yourself turn all your dreams into reality.

Every personality has his or her own variations on how any emotion feels. You shouldn’t be ashamed of your emotions and you shouldn’t feel guilty of letting your emotions out. You shouldn’t suppress your emotions or to be flustered thinking about how you express them.

(2.1) EMBARRASSMENT DIMENSION: how emotional spectrum can be represented in the reality?

Embarrassment is a necessary component of a life that’s being lived fully and intensively.

Embarrassment is the first emotion, revealed immediately as a response to something failed.

Embarrassment is born, almost exclusively, from trying too hard without result orall the efforts were totally frustrated. It’s the absolute opposite of apathy. It shows that we went too far, pushed too hard, put ourselves a little too out there and didn’t have it work out as planned.

Embarrassment is an undesirable sentiment but it’s also a noble one in its own right. It declares, by definition, “I was trying too hard, but it was not enough to prevent [something] from happening”.

Some instances in your life will be nothing more than utterly mortifying. There are token embarrassing moments you will experience that not only raise your confidence and coolness factor, but also teach you something valuable.

You are immediately certain that every person who has ever seen you embarrass yourself is thinking about you in that exact moment – reliving what you’ve done in excruciating detail and judging you without remorse. In reality, we remember our own embarrassments with a frequency and amplitude that is absolutely impossible to replicate. Those who witness our embarrassments rarely think any more of it, or experienced a twinge of empathy for us. They certainly are not walking around weeks later reliving our embarrassing moment in their minds. They are consumed by their own concerns, their own commitments and their own past embarrassments. They scarcely have the time or energy to focus on ours.

HOW TO COPE WITH AN EXTREME EMBARRASSMENT?

To cope with an extreme embarrassment, you should have in your mind the following:

(1) Just because you are going through infertility treatment cycle right now, doesn’t mean you will never ever smile again. Pain is purely temporary. Remember that before you give up and decide you will never be whole again. A year from now, you are going to be an entirely different person. You would have shed this skin made of pain and heartache and become someone stronger, more compassionate and better. Every day that passes, you grow further and further from the thing that caused you pain.

(2) Forgive yourself. Learn this and relearn this every single day. For as long as it takes for it to sink in. You are human, you are allowed your flaws, you are allowed to be in pain, and your journey does not have to be hindered with self–criticism. You have enough to deal with. Therefore, forgive yourself the person pain makes of you.

(3) Self–care is very important. You can’t look after anyone else, unless you learn how to look after yourself. Take care of your mind, your soul and your body. Don’t allow anyone to tell you that you are being selfish during this time. Be kinder to yourself by allowing yourself the time you need to heal and grow.

(4) Not every friendship was built to last. You will find, that during your time of great pain and need, a lot of friends will not be there for you. They were there for you because you fulfilled a role in their lives. Now that you are hurting, these are the kind of people who will turn their backs on you. Understand that there is no better way of knowing who your real friends are, unless you face great pain in your life.

(5) Let your pain teach you empathy. Let your pain teach you strength. Allow it to show you that you are unstoppable and indestructible and draw on this when you face trauma or any kind of heartache again. Remember that you have been here before, and that you are stronger than anything life throws at you.

(6) Stop trying to be there for everyone all the time. You are needed most of all for yourself right now. Being there for other people more than you can be will just cause you more heartache and burden than necessary. Try, but do not compromise your mental health for anyone else’s benefit.

(7) Stop wishing for altering the past. There is absolutely no way to go back and fix what has happened. There is no way to change what has happened to you. You can only learn from it and move forward. Terrible things happen for a reason, sometimes they lead us to the happiest moments of our lives. Remember that because it will stop you from forever living in the past.

(2.2) SHAME DIMENSION: how emotional spectrum can be represented in the reality?

Sometimes, you may wake up in the middle of the night and have no idea what’s bothering you. You just feel fear. Fear for your life. Fear for your future. Fear to be alone. Fear you won’t be understood. Fear to lose someone you love because of infertility. This is the way emotional spectrum of shame can start to reveal itself.

Shame closely correlated with fear about failure.

Shame is something so toxic, and we all feel it in different intensities.

We will always be in a situation where we wish we did something different, we wish we said something else, we wish we looked a different way, thought a different way, or behave a different way.

We all blame ourselves, and by doing that; we are blaming the only person who has consistently shown their commitment to all of the moments in our life.

There is so much scarcity in showing up for yourself in the midst of intense emotion of shame, but it’s vital to understand that coping with shame is closely connected with self–forgiveness for experiencing it.

HOW TO COPE WITH AN EXCESSIVE SHAME?

To cope with an excessive shame, you should have in your mind the following:

(1) Letting go shame is necessary for forgiveness because it releases the structured models of expectations we have regarding success and failure, by letting go we are giving the world as well as ourselves permission to no longer think of our own beings with anger, but with compassion.

(2) Compassion is something we need more of in every sense. Compassion is wonderful because it is one of the basic traits that almost every person in the population has the ability to exert. Compassion requires understanding, it requires patience, and it requires having the perception that no one is perfect in any form.

(3) There are nuances about everyone and everything that may frustrate you. But you should realize these frustrations are just your thoughts, nothing more than your thoughts, they are not the results of your imperfections. What is necessary to remember is that all thoughts can be turned from negative into neutral or positive, all emotional categories can be transferred from negative to positive through neutral ones, all emotional responses to the thoughts can be turned into implicit or explicit, and the way we continue to still experience positive emotional spectrum after excruciating moments of shame, is to knowingly forgive ourselves for experiencing the both agonizing and inevitable moments which happen in our lives.

(2.3) GUILT DIMENSION: how emotional spectrum can be represented in the reality?

While struggling with infertility, you are living with a tension between two powerful and conflicting emotions:anger and guilt. To distinguish these emotional dimensions, you should concentrate your attention on your thoughts and emotions: anger is the response for consequences which can be hardly altered or for something irreversible, impossible to change. Grief is an emotional spectrum, caused as a result of experiencing any form of suffering. No one should chastise you for expressing pain. No one will perceive you as weak. Those that reach out by bursting into tears are stronger than those who hide. You should not be ashamed for your sufferings.

It is normal to experience intense guilt if (1) You have lost someone you cared for; (2) You have lost someone who made you smile; (3) You have lost someone you imagined a future with.

But, if your grief is intensified by the medical diagnosis – infertility, you must stop blaming yourself for it. Let’s be clear: guilt is an emotion that should be limited to those who have knowingly done something wrong. Guilt shouldn’t go along with a medical disease.

Guilt makes all your failure–related remembrances so vivid as everything you thought about has just happened to you. Guilt makes you a person, who would love to categorize this as just another thing you thought too much about and the scenario you played out didn’t come true before your eyes.

Guilt makes you overanalyze things or overthinking them. You want to dismiss this little thing that is overcoming your thoughts, but it is impossible for you.

Grief whispers: “This is wonderful, but it’s too wonderful for you. There is no way this is going to last”.

Guilt is relentless. Confused mindset is constantly making you feel numb.

Guilt is every worst–case scenario “What if” that never comes to life.

Guilt HURTS too much. You don’t feel your own body. Nobody knows the right way to console you.

Except this one is real too. This one is valid too.

Guilt makes you remember all the things you had been ever said that you were loved and respected and how you woke up one morning to wish it all gone. Guilt completely changes you as a personality.

Guilt explicates: “I am guilty for admitting these things about my infertility, for saying them out loud”.

Thoughts that you are worthless just add to your guilt additional destructive emotional spectrum. The guilt is intensified by your thoughts. It becomes worse than your infertility–related unhappiness. But it’s not the unhappiness, because of your infertility, that makes you burst into tears. It is not the unhappiness that makes you feel miserable. Although you are unhappy, you can suppress those emotions. But you shouldn’t. Suppressing such emotions leads to waking up the next morning feeling shame, embarrassment and even more guilt.

Guilt is frequently viewed as a virtue, as a high sense of responsibility and morality. It is absolutely essential to reveal the truth about INTENSE GUILT – the truth is that guilt is the greatest destroyer of emotional energy. It leaves you feeling excessively exhausted both emotionally and physically in the present by something that has already occurred. Guilt is always entailed by the emotional exasperation, moral emptiness, heart–breaking experience, or insecurity.

GUILT–related spectrum of emotions starts with recurrent negative thinking. Guilt and anger are a potent enough cocktail, but when you mix in grief and regret it’s enough to disrupt your nervous system completely.

It won’t even make sense how intense sufferings can be caused by infertility. It’ll somehow make you feel guilty for being so distraught. You will feel quite embarrassed whenever you talk about infertility. It will be confusing. Confusing as to how you feel so much about something so undefined. It’ll hurt beyond reason. Don’t underestimate how heartbreaking something like that is.

If you catch yourself thinking that there are nuances about you that frustrate you because of your infertility or there are nuances about your beloved that frustrate you because of infertility, concentrate your whole attention on the feeling, what you have about yourself or on the feelings, which you have. But you should consider, that these frustrations can be just a result of your imaginative imperfections. If you realized that such frustrations are without real basis, you should stop these negative associations between yourself, your beloved person and infertility.

HOW TO COPE WITH AN INTENSE GUILT?

(1) Take yourself somewhere calming and comfortable. If you’re lucky enough to be at home, then try your bedroom. Accept how you are feeling and stop fighting it. Dedicate an hour of your time to calm down and continue with your day afterwards.

(2) Create a “GRIEF” list. Every morning as soon as you wake up – think about everything what makes you feel guilty, and when you get up – write down everything that is causing you some guilt. While this isn’t going to eliminate all the stress you are feeling, seeing everything that you are worried about on paper can give you a better perspective on exactly what is causing you to panic most about.

(3) Choose one notebook for special purposes. Create there a “HAPPINESS” list. You want to enjoy the happiness. You want to just live in the present and let things be and to “not chase it”. Because that’s what everybody tells you is the right thing to do: let happiness happen to you. Enjoy it. Just breathe. Note down everything what you associate with your happiness. Everything in the utmost details: one line in your notebook for just one thing to be noted down. Near your “HAPPINESS”–related things’ list, write what you should do to reach what you want. If you have several variants of how to turn your dream into reality, you should mention all of them. After that choose several things which can be done today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow etc. Schedule at least “ONE HAPPINESS” for ONE DAY for whole this month.

Usually, happiness, when you are grief–stricken, is almost painful. You can sense how close you are to feeling purely lighthearted, and relaxed, and content. You can sense how close you are to joy and bliss. But you also know that these kinds of feelings are (painfully) just out of reach. They are almost there in front of you, they are almost yours, but not quite.

Happiness, when you are grief–stricken, feels like failure. Because rather than enjoying it, all you can think about is how you’re doing it wrong. Something that should be so intrinsic, so instinctual, can feel like such a challenge to you. A burden. A strain. And – because you think you’re doing it wrong – it can cause a strong a sense of shame.

Happiness, when you are grief–stricken, is the epitome of bittersweet. It’s lovely and delightful and wonderful, but it’s also whispering in your mind that it can only stay for so long.

“ONE HAPPINESS” for ONE DAY technique can perfectly deal with your grief. Even if you have mentioned that first of all you need to sip a cup of cappuccino to stop your infertility–related flow of thoughts, you would definitely have at least seven minutes of your mind absorbed by the coffee–drinking. Seven GRIEF–FREE minutes can alter one hour of your life.

Practicing this psychological method every day even for one month will bring the results. Through experiencing GRIEF–HAPPINESS emotional paradigm, ultimately, you will accept yourself and learn how to love yourself. You can also create “HAPPINESS” list or “LIST of HAPPINESS’ MOMENTS” for your beloved. You should also learn how to love your beloved more every day until you will feel that you are committed to her [him], despite you [your loved one or you both] are infertile. What if the fortune wants to teach you the value found in committing to one person forever, not the exhausting pursuit of searching your entire life to find the perfect person? And just feeling guilty about having this medical diagnose doesn’t seem that you should blame yourself, decide that you aren’t the one who should be loved, you are not the one your beloved should waste her [his] time on me anymore and you didn’t want to waste your time or lose someone you love.

This strategy for coping with your grief or for bringing into the life of your beloved grief–free moments can alter your present and future: experiencing happiness always brings happy consequences, even short–timed ones.

(2.4) SADNESS DIMENSION: how emotional spectrum can be represented in the reality?

Sadness is an opportunity to deeply appreciate your losses.

Sadness seems dark and dismal and something to flee from.

Sadness brings you eye to eye with your desires.

Sadness can come after the grief.

Sadness is simply a part of reality that must be embodied and endured. But sometimes it is something more than just a part of reality, sometimes sadness correlates with dynamic duo of frustration and anger and in this case sadness turns in something relentless.

Sadness comes in so many shapes and sizes. Sometimes it’s quick and under extraordinarily tragic circumstances. Sometimes it’s slow, painful, and drawn out. There is no wrong emotion to feel. Sadness may last minutes, hours, days, or weeks. But hold on, because just as quickly as it began, it will end. Breathe.

It is quite difficult to express emotional paradigm of sadness. Usually, it is easier to express happiness and anger and frustration and passion. Sadness is something dark and dangerous that if you embodied too much, it wouldn’t leave. Pure sadness is the darkness piercing through you. You will feel nothing. Numb. Lifeless. The simple acts of feeding and dressing yourself should be commended. But it gives you a reprieve, an excuse to stop, curl up, wind down – it demands a compassionate response to sort out some internal things.

Sadness usually correlates with agony. In the moments of agony there is protest; in sadness, there is more resignation and hopelessness. Agony attempts to deal actively with the source of the loss. Sadness is more passive. Often agony appears to have no purpose when there is nothing that can be done to recover what has been lost.

Sadness is one of the longer–lasting emotions. After a period of protesting agony, there is usually a period of resigned sadness, in which the person feels totally helpless; and then, again, the protesting agony returns in an attempt to recover the loss, followed by sadness, then agony, again and again. When emotions are mild or even moderate, they may be as brief as a few seconds, or they can last a few minutes before another emotion (or no specific emotion) is felt.

Sadness contains both disappointment and despair. If the feeling of sadness grows extremely strong or is held for long, it may convert into agony. The trigger occurs in a context: current circumstances and feelings, the event, our worldview, which is influenced by our prior experiences, personal history and inherited universal scripts about important events.

Sadness obviously exists for a reason. It exists to show our ability to be compassionate to others, and to ourselves, but it shouldn’t go along with medical disease. Sadness is a normal reaction to unfortunate events. If you find yourself in tears when a fertility test comes back with bad results, a pregnancy test is negative, a treatment fails, or you have a miscarriage, that’s normal.

It is normal to experience profound sadness in case of miscarriage or recurrent miscarriages. It is normal to experience profound sadness when you remember tragic memories you made in such situations, for example: “I had the gift holding you every second that your heart was beating, until the moment it stopped. I fell in love with you when you were forming inside of me, and now I hold you in my heart instead of my arms. You were just too perfect, too beautiful for this earth, and now you’re an angel instead”.

Even if it has been over two years from now since your miscarriage and you can tell that it was by far the hardest thing you have ever had to deal with and the biggest heartbreak you have ever experienced in your life. Up until recently when you have talked in–depth about what happened to yourself about losing a baby, you would experience profound sadness. Deep down in my heart you may think he was a boy or she was a girl, so throughout all of this you will refer to him as a he or to her as a she. If you think that maybe it could be therapeutic for you to have a conversation with yourself about what happened instead of just repressing those memories, your sadness is absolutely normal, because it explicates that you might have just missed your unborn baby.

It is normal to experience sadness in case if you lost your unborn baby in extraordinarily tragic circumstances.

It is normal to experience sadness if something in your treatment cycle went wrong.

It is normal to experience sadness about things that you feel like you do want to change but can’t seem to find the courage to do so. It is normal to experience sadness because you feel loneliness from time to time or you have forgotten something very important.

BUT IF YOU FIND YOURSELF that infertility–related sadness became a part of your life and, furthermore, if sadness interferes in your life:

– …you have beenblaming yourself for what happened for months;

– …depression took hold of you and quickly dragged you down, deeper than you have ever imagined depression could take somebody;

– …you stopped seeing friends from the shame of just being sad, frustrated or depressed, let alone what happened to me;

The thing about frustration is that when you deal with yourself, you may know that something doesn’t feel right inside and hurts too much, but there are many questions that you may ask internally or outwardly with responses that may or may never come.

Undoubtedly, infertility is a serious problem. It causes you an endless number of headaches, frustration and pain. Not just you either, but your beloved and the people in your life as well.

If not coping with, frustration extrapolates your failures, fears, fortune. Extrapolation is when you project your known experience into the unknown and conjure up some vision for the future. It’s when you look at one little thing and extend it out into some global judgement about the universe. In psychology, they even have a name for it: fundamental attribution error. It’s a cognitive bias.

Being frustrated, you are projecting forward an unpleasant future and fighting about that. There is a solution. The next time you are frustrated, the next time you feel acute pain or resentment or unfairness, all you have to do is remember one thing: This moment is not your life. This is just a moment in your life.

You should welcome frustration as a source of wisdom. It is the intuitive part of you summoning to reach deeper into the abyss of your mind and find out the answers on your numerous questions. Frustration can be a great source of decision–making process as it prevents the most negative scenarios of events to happen in your life.

Unlike other emotions, anger doesn’t accomplish anything of itself. Sadness is an emotion that you can feel a catharsis through, but embracing anger only makes you angrier.

Anger is a common reaction to the stress of infertility. Be careful it doesn’t take over your life. Both anxiety and depression can lead to getting frustrated more than normal, as well as losing your patience more easily. Anger can overwhelm even the most self–reflective and self–aware person. When you are flooded, your pulse races and your limbic system takes over, making rational thought almost impossible.

It’s important to understand that anger is often covers up more vulnerable feelings such as embarrassment, sadness, and hopelessness.

Anger and frustration over infertility can also be misdirected at those around you.

You may find yourself snapping at someone over small things, not because what they did was so bad, but because you’re feeling angry and frustrated inside.

You may find yourself feeling angry at random pregnant women or those with small babies. Maybe even people you don’t know. Wherever there is anger, there is sadness lurking on the other side.

If we are attentive to our emotional state, not only conscious of how we are feeling but pausing to consider whether we want to act on our angry feelings, it will still be a struggle if we decide not to act on our anger.

Being angry is a way to release stress and frustration instead of bottling that stuff up. The key is to be angry for the right reasons and to express and release it the right ways. One possibility is to buy a journal and before you go to sleep, write down what made you angry and why it made you angry. Really focus on the “why” part of that. This is far more constructive than just intensify your anger by sitting and doing nothing.

Even in life’s challenges, you should be always taught to try to find the happiness in each struggle or pain or hurt. And you should try to as much as you can. But you are a real person and you can’t always do that. Sadness is not your feeling or emotion of first–choice – it is an inevitable feeling. You are allowed to be sad – but the more important thing you have to understand is that you are also allowed to be happy. It’s the type of sadness that consumes your body, leaving you unable to function or keep a solid thought. It makes you excessively exhausted and extremely nervous, yet you can’t sleep. Your aching sadness follows you into your dreams.

You overcome sadness by understanding that you are a human and yes, contrary to popular belief or preference, humans have a vast array of emotions and it is healthy and good to actually feel them. Love gives your sadness the energy it needs to move through you, so it can move on. By loving your sadness, you’re respecting your truth. And emotional freedom always follows truth.

HOW TO COPE WITH A PROFOUND SADNESS?

Every person on earth has imperfections. Infertility is not an imperfection. Infertility is a medical condition, but it is also treatable. Infertility isn’t contagious, and it’s not something to be ashamed or embarrassed of. It’s just a part of your story, even it may be a huge part of your story, but it never defines you as broken, defective or worthless. The very first step is admitting the problem. Nobody is perfect. Probably, you have struggled with infertility for months or for years. Probably, you have searched for books that focus on infertility and, probably you have made the mistake of trusting that you can handle the situation yourself including coping with infertility–related emotions, feelings and thoughts. Yourself…what does that even stand for? How can you define yourself? How can you represent yourself to the society, being infertile and perfectly understanding this?

A married [or single], young professional, scared daughter [or scared son], needing a loving embrace from your sister [brother] after recently finding out the chances of having a baby someday are slim to none? Maybe.

Or maybe it’s a married [single], young professional, with the perfect potential to advocate for transparent and inclusive discussion about infertility amongst women [men], trying to embrace the help, guidance, and affection of those around you while struggling with infertility and praying that someday, you will be lucky enough to have a baby? Maybe.

TRANSFERING THE INTEGRATIVE BASICS of the meaning WHO YOU ARE from the first represented variant of self–association withinto the second determines the life–altering decision: you can cope with all your sufferings, you can struggle to implement your dream of having a baby into the reality, you will be a person, who has his/her beloved and a baby.

Identifying yourself strongly outlines the modality of social attitude and corrects your behavioral patterns. How will you react to the hidden smiles, withering glances, malicious gossips, veiled intrigues, utter contempt from people who had had neutral attitude to you until they have found out your delicate problem incidentally revealed and hotly discussed? How can you prevent such situations from happening into your life? Will it bother you?

If you identify yourself as a married [or single], young professional, scared daughter [or scared son], needing a loving embrace from your sister [brother] after recently finding out the chances of having a baby someday are slim to none? – EVERYTHING WILL HURT YOU, every single word, every single comment, every single remark, every single phrase, either explicated with deepest sympathy or with profound contempt. Everyone has his [her] own untold sufferings, but infertility brings the greatest ones. The emotions and feelings you will experience are innumerable, but rest assured, you will get through each one. Surely, you will reconcile your pain and have more moments of peace. You will overcome your bitter sadness and experience joy. But in this case, it would be much more prolonged in aspect of time. Do you have much time for self–blaming [one more week, one more month, one more year]? Do you really think that identifying yourself in negative way and doing nothing would ever bring you much–desired baby? Do you think that in a decade everything would have changed without any efforts from your side? Do you really think so?

If you identify yourself as a married [or single], young professional, scared daughter [or scared son], needing a loving embrace from your sister [brother] after recently finding out the chances of having a baby someday are slim to none? – there is no chance for you to remember wonderful memories you made, because you have just chosen self–contempt and self–worthlessness instead of trying to alter your situation. But still, these both alternatives are manageable.

(2.5) SELF–CONTEMPT AND SELF–WORTHLESSNESS DIMENSION: how emotional spectrum can be represented in the reality?

Recollect in your mind the remembrances about the dating–time with your beloved, the time you fell on love with him or her. The great attachment had arisen from the identical shine inside the eyes of you both, from identical glances both of you had casted furtively. Usually, such attachment arises just for one moment to be noticed, but lasts the whole eternity. When your eyes met for the first time, something in you was jolted awake. You both knew right from that moment you were the one your beloved was going to fall in love with. From the first moment your beloved came into your life, the tone he/she spoke in was always a little different. Every glance was a little more intense. Your beloved made you believe in love again and you thought you were going to be his/her exception. You gave him/her all your heart and trusted your beloved with your deepest secrets. Everything was perfect in your past: hidden or shy glances casted by languorous black eyes, delicate colors, passion, staying together. As soon as the engagement ring is slipped on, you both were inundated with messages about how your relationship should be. And at this moment, a warm thought of having ababy cuddled against you both sparked so many emotions within yourselves.

Visualize your wedding day: pastel–colored flower bouquet, admirable glances, affectionate embraces, a flash of remembrance passed between you both how everything miraculously had started, you cuddled against each other, tears of happiness, gorgeous smiles, you both were so inspired and full of love, you both embraced that wedding day, you both felt love, you both had so many dreams about your lives, and having a baby was the first your dream.

Do you feel yourself like being in a whirl of vivid remembrances, inspired by your perfect marriage?

Do you have strong affection for your fiancé/ fiancée at present time?

Try to remember the day you understood that something was wrong with you. Before doing this, you should push down any indication of sorrow, because you will be overwhelmed by it after your remembrances.

Several years has passed surprisingly quickly. And your dream of having a baby was totally frustrated by the recurrent failures of your attempts. Has your dream of having a baby sparked so many emotions within you? Have you wondered what was wrong with you and why still you haven’t had a baby? Ever wish you had the answers to all your questions before you “walked” into the marriage’s miracle? Have you had a thought that you would never be able to enjoy the beauty of marriage? After you have been diagnosed of being infertile, did your perfect marriage turn out in a marriage myth? Were you utterly confused about what had happened? Have you tried to alter everything together? What consequences have entailed your attempts? What emotions have you both felt? How the medical disease has changed your life–patterns since then?

Imagine the future situation you are in. Or if you have such situation at present time, imagine it more vividly.

If it is a little bit difficult for you to imagine which emotions infertility may bring in your life, read the following paragraph: “Everyone has the utmost dream, but not all the dreams come true. My memories of infertility and pregnancy are vivid like yesterday. My husband and I both have been dreaming about having a baby since the day of our marriage. Two years passed and we realized that it’s not always as simple as we thought. Frustrated, scared and confused, we went through months of testing, procedures, the endless waiting and many disappointments. I was a bundle of nerves. Eventually, my doctor recommended me to visit fertility expert at fertility clinic to help me find out why I couldn’t get pregnant. It seemed to me like everyone had drained his life’s troubles to the lees, but my sufferings were unbearable and endless. Infertility was the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me!...”.

When attempts to have a baby fail, it can be an emotionally devastating experience. Miracle of your perfect marriage is totally broken. Tears of confusion, embarrassment, despair, guilt and grief, sorrowful glances, imploring glances, feeling of being hurt, taught nerves, untold sufferings, frustrating thoughts about the future that your beloved would decide you weren’t the one and your beloved wouldn’t want to waste his/her time on you anymore, that you would be told that it was your fault, not his/her also, that you would try to beg your beloved to stay but he/she would refuse to turn back, that your beloved wouldn’t even bother saying goodbye and would leave you hanging, that you suddenly would found yourself alone and having to salvage the pieces of your heart your beloved so mercilessly would have had torn apart.

Infertility is a heartbreaking experience. Being emotionally and physically exhausting, infertility can cause tremendous stress. Sometimes, it can lead to depression and anxiety. Anxiety and depression both start from self–worthlessness, self–contempt and self–isolation. In reality, emotional infertility–related paradigm, which always transfers into anxiety/depression is implemented as following: you won’t tell your beloved and others how much infertility hurts you; you won’t tell your beloved you are hurt; words strung together that broke you, you knew wasn’t love but the opposite; and you replay it in your mind the thought that you are infertile, holding back tears; you know this pain that is just now coming to the surface would consume; the truth is exactly what you wanted to avoid this situation; but the truth no matter how ugly it is, always comes out and when it does the person who gets hurt the most isn’t the one who deserves it; you won’t tell your beloved how you are not sleeping at night but that you are tired during the day; you won’t tell your beloved how you are trying to channel this into something greater than yourself but every time you do it ends with you confused and hurt and more broken; you won’t tell your beloved that you still look at your phone waiting for positive results from fertility experts every morning wondering when any of this will make sense or when you’ll stop waking up with this pain that is the only reminder you are alive, because you are going through the motions lifeless.

The truth is you are trying hard not to lose your beloved, you lost yourself trying to keep your beloved. You say you are fine when you ask her but you haven’t seen her since. You are trying to keep it together, you are trying to be nice. And maybe your beloved talked and maybe you answered but what isn’t being said is this truth.

The worst thing infertility can cause is broken up marriages and tight relations. Because how do you look, someone, you love in the eyes and tell them you broke me? How do you look, someone, you love in the eyes and say I still love you but I hate what you did to me? How do you look, someone, you love in the eyes and say despite all of this I can’t stop thinking about you and I’m struggling to move on? You don’t say those things because there is nothing anyone can say to follow that or fix it. This pain is irreversible. This person you used to look at with eyes of perfection you now realize is tainted. Someone you can’t trust. Someone you should question. Because when given the chance to hold your heart in your hands you dropped it. This pain consumes you and the past replays in your mind like a kaleidoscope of mixed colors and you just keep wondering why didn’t you see is coming? You don’t want to blame your beloved. You don’t want to be angry. And you are not angry in the least. You are just hurt.

In fact, you are pinning all this on yourself thinking the pain you feel is completely and totally something you caused. Like there was a sign you misread or something you have making up. And it’s your beloved you owe an apology to. You won’t tell you how much your infertility and broken marriage hurt you because you feel guilty about it. You are trying to be nice. You are trying to be strong. But more than anything you are just trying to heal.

Do you feel like your entire life is focused on infertility?

Do you go to sleep and wake up thinking about getting pregnant?

Do you worry your beloved is going to leave you because of your fertility problems?

Do you worry your beloved will cast a glance full of contempt at you after having found out that you are infertile?

Do you worry that people will love you less (or not at all) if they knew you were infertile?

Do you see yourself as broken? Defective? Worthless?

Do you think that your life is worthless?

If you have answered at least two “yes”, you may be experiencing infertility–related depression or anxiety.

When self–contempt or self–worthlessness hits you, in this intense moment of weakness, you think of all the things that did not go right in your life. In that moment, all you can see is all the failures and difficult moments in your life. You remember all the timelines you missed that you should have met, but did not want to. You want the bad, all-consuming thoughts to leave you alone, but they chase you until you cannot run any further. You feel weak and you cry, usually alone where no one can see or hear you, because you have to show others how strong you are, even though you are so broken inside.

There is so much scarcity in showing up for yourself in the midst of intense emotion of self–contempt and self–worthlessness, but it’s what separates those who are stagnant and those who are ever evolving.

Is it because you feel ashamed? Maybe. Is it because it’s embarrassing to talk about? Sometimes. Is hard because your infertility can be misunderstood? Yes. Could you simply just be terrified and not know how to communicate that? Probably. You’re allowing infertility to define you as a person. But you are so much more than your infertility.

HOW TO COPE WITH SELF–CONTEMPT AND SELF–WORTHLESSNESS?

Synergy is extremely important in a marriage. If your beloved has the same vision as you, he/she will understand your struggles and support your pursuits. Your beloved will encourage your walk. Your beloved will be empathetic. There is much power in two people doing life with the same goals, dreams, and passions for life. If there is no synergy in your marriage, your marriage is broken or your beloved left you, it is also possible to cope with these destructive emotional states.

You should teach yourself how to deal with it, and how to keep yourself together. Sometimes you will fail to do so, but you should continue to try every day. It is not easy (and it’s extremely frustrating) but it is possible to cope and overcome these destructive emotional states’ power to take over your life; it just takes time and it takes patience.

(1) This moment is not your life. This is just a moment in your life.

It will pass, it is just a moment; sometimes a short moment, sometimes a longer moment, but it is temporary. Just focus on your breath and be present in the moment. Practice mindfulness. Breathe, just breathe. No thoughts.

(2) Accept yourself. Self-acceptance is key.

The only person who is going to be with you for the rest of your life is you. You owe it to yourself to treat yourself well, and love yourself for who you are. Stop trying to live up to other people’s expectations of you. You will never be able to make everyone happy, but you can choose to make yourself happy.

(3) Constructive dialogue with someone trustworthy and sympathetic.

Talk to a loved one or a someone that you trust. You need someone in your life who will listen to everything you are feeling without judging you. Without making comments about your decisions. Someone emotional in neutral way. Someone who accepts facts wholeheartedly. Someone who will be affectionate. Someone who can listen and hear you. Someone, with whom you feel like trusting your own feelings. Someone, with whom you feel like you could never be lonely. Someone with whom you feel like leaning and not falling.

(4) Love yourself.

Don’t beat yourself up over every mistake or bad thing that has happened in your life; try to think of all the good things – it may seem impossible, but remember that you are a wonderful person who adds so much to other people’s lives. You brighten someone’s day every day with your existence, without even knowing it. Self–love feels like you have a person in this world to talk to and lean on at any moment of the day. Self–love feels like wonder. It’s warm. It’s calm. It’s delicate. Only loving yourself you can love others. How is it possible to love someone if you don’t love yourself? Loving yourself feels like the best thing that has ever happened. Loving yourself feels like there’s no way it can last. Loving yourself feels like you will never have to date anyone else in this world again, but definitely you will.

(5) Professional psychological counselling.

You are not alone. There are so many others out there like you, who keep it together in front of others and then lose it when they are alone. If all your attempts to cope with self–contempt and self–worthlessness fail, ask for professional help. The expert should be certified mental health professional, who understand understands your problems and has not only theoretical, but also practical experience in coping with difficult psychological situations.

As a result of studying the whole spectrum of the most common infertility–related emotional spectrum, which includes emotion of excessive shame, emotion of intense guilt, emotion of profound sadness, emotion of agony and emotion of self–contempt as a natural recursive collision between their intensity evolution and the linear existence of emotional system of the personality.

(4) You are constantly struggling with night sleep and have disrupted sleep patterns

Are you a woman looking at mobile phone in the midnight unable to sleep, completely confused by your infertility–related thoughts? Or are you a man, feeling anxiety and googling the information being in bed unable to fall asleep?

Everyone experiences nights, when because of nervous tension it is impossible to fall asleep, right? Everyone experiences nightmares, right? Everyone experiences night dreams, which are graphic and terrifying, right?

But if you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep throughout the nights, being unable to bring harmony into your own thoughts, overanalyzing things or overthinking things, loving to categorize things as just another things you thought too much about and the scenario you are played out didn’t come true before your eyes – you are dealing with disrupted sleep patterns.

Infertility stress disrupts sleep patterns.

You are constantly struggling with night sleep because of infertility–related nervous tension and anxiety. Sleep and sleep disturbances are increasingly recognized as determinants of infertility–related stress, anxiety and depression. Stress, caused by infertility can make it very difficult to sleep well at night. Depression and anxiety can interfere with sleep and totally disrupt your sleep patterns. It is essential to outline the difference between normal sleepless night and disrupted sleep patterns through their simple comparison:

Comparing infertility disrupts sleep patterns with simple night when it is impossible to fall asleep because of nervous tension, overwhelming frustration, capturing despair, it is vital to emphasize, that in the first case, as soon as emotional exasperation, nervous tension or frustrating thought would be stopped, nothing would be changed in the person’s night sleep, because the situation is temporary, it can be intensive or dynamic, but still temporary.

Start by tossing and turning. Rearrange your seven pastel–coloured pillows several times. Hug your pillows tightly. Cuddle up to two of them close. Try laying on your right side, then left, then back to right, then on your belly, then back to the left. Kick the blankets to the edge of the bed and then discover you’re freezing so pull them back up to your shoulders and burrow. Stare at the clock. Wonder how it became 2:30 AM so quickly and why you’re not even tired. Mentally retrace all your steps. Did you have coffee later than you should’ve? Did you have an argument yesterday in the morning?

Having sipped coffee late in the evening doesn’t mean you experience sleeping disorder. Being angry or having a heated argument with your significant other (loved one or anyone else) can severely affect your ability to fall asleep. Arguing leaves you feeling nervous and flustered, so it will probably take you longer to fall asleep. There is also a chance you will recollect the vivid remembrances of the argument over and over in your mind, which can arouse the negative feelings at their most intense [utter confusion, great embarrassment, extreme shame, resentment, mortification, etc.] and keep you awake longer time. If you feel yourself getting agitated at a situation or a person – remind yourself that is not the best time to act on it at night.

Would you still be in this position if you’d gone with your inner old–person gut and asked for decaf? Is the coffee really to blame at all? Is espresso responsible or is it just you? Get in your head. Wonder if anyone else is as awake as you are right at this second. Wish you had someone to talk to even though you would have no idea what to even say to someone when you’re in an insomniac state and are feeling lonely. If you blame that pulsating anxiety for why you’re still awake at 2:30 AM and set four alarms because you know you will sleep through at least the first, that doesn’t mean that you have disrupted sleep patterns.

BUT IF YOU FIND YOURSELF…

– …constantly curling back into bed, around that seventh pastel–coloured pillow, under those blankets, and turning on your laptop for googling infertility testing (invasive and non–invasive), infertility medications, how to cope with infertility–related stress, how to cope with infertility–related depression, how to cope with negative thoughts during the treatment cycle, how infertility disrupts sleep patterns, how to fall asleep having an anxiety, etc.;

– …lost in your own irrational thoughts that you are the only one GUILTY in your infertility, you are the only one chosen to be infertile, you are the only one who doesn’t deserve to be loved and understood, overwhelmed with infertility–related negative emotions such as anxiety, guilt, fear, frustration, sadness, etc. every single night. Wish you were different. Wish this was different. Wish everything was different. Remember the times when sleep was wonderful. When going to bed was your most favorite part of every day. It wasn’t something else you failed at. Swear to yourself that tomorrow, you’ll try to go to bed early. Know that it’s probably another lie, but swear it anyway;

– …suffering extreme anxiety and sudden panic attacks at night. It’s tossing and turning for hours on end, never being able to soothe your own mind. The extreme nervousness doesn’t seem to let you up after periods of tension. Anxiety is learning how to function with sleep deprivation because it took you until 3.00 AM to shut your eyes. Anxiety is the restless nights of sleep, as you are constantly tossing and turning, glancing imploringly at your wrist–watch through the night darkness or sitting all the night long. It’s the thoughts you think, re–think and over–think about your chances of having a baby are nearly zero before bedtime and all of your worst fears become a reality in dreams and nightmares. It’s always wondering if what you are feeling is anxiety, or if you are in fact dying. You don’t want to get out of bed in fear it will be hard to breathe. You’re always living and breathing in paralyzing fear. Sometimes it goes away. Some nights, you sleep perfectly. And on those days and nights, you forget about it all. You forget about the tingling hands and the 3 AM panic attacks. But deep down you know those nights will always come back. The panic will always come back. No matter how long it’s been. It’s waking up tired even though your day just started;

– …tossing and turning and sighing heavily to try to get your mind off of everything. It’s turning on your night stand lamp and writing ideas down for work because your head feels like it will explode if you don’t get it all out right then and there. It’s looking at the clock and watching it tick away while you’re trying to close your eyes and just calm down. It’s tearing up out of frustration because your body is so tired. It’s so tired, and you can’t give it what it needs. You can’t fall asleep because your mind is so wide awake and buzzed. Your mind doesn’t give a damn about you. And just like that you wake up, exhausted from the night before, etc.,

…YOU ARE EXPERIENCING MORE OR LESS AN INFERTILITY–RELATED SLEEP DISORDER, WHICH CAN BE TURNED INTO INSOMNIA (inability to sleep).

To represent all spectrum of the negative consequences, brought into your life by the disrupted sleep patterns, you should visualize the morning situation like this: ‘…You can’t fall asleep because your mind is so wide awake and buzzed. Your mind doesn’t give a damn about you. And just like that you wake up, exhausted from the night before. You turn up late, or you miss meetings in the morning because that’s the time when you start to fall asleep – and you refuse to let anything get in the way. Guilt consumes you. You feel worthless, ashamed, scared, hopeless, and cancel on anything that makes you anxious, and everything makes you anxious and annoyed, even people on the train chatting on their phones. Whenever you are present in your hobby–class, or at a meeting, it takes you tremendous effort and courage to cope with intense guilt and anxiety. You feel like you have conquered something, until you realize that you are putting in so much effort for something that requires minimal effort for others, and start to despair’.

The emotional detriments of insomnia are an endless cycle of guilt, tiredness and hopelessness. Trying to escape drains both willpower and reputation. Reputation, because insomnia is not an excuse, and neither is depression. Wanting to sleep is seen as being extremely exhausted. Not sleeping earlier is seen as a mismanagement of time. There is no easy solution to sleeplessness, because the causes are so diverse. This is a reality of what insomnia can be, and the hidden emotional costs of this debilitating condition.

If you are caught in such situation [at night] whenyour anxiety consumes you about infertility, infertility’s first consultation, infertility testing the next day and causes extreme anxiety or panic attack, take three deep breaths in, and three deep breaths out and to repeat this several times. You should consider, that all we ever have is the present moment. There is no past, there is no future. The past is impossible to alter, but the future can be altered through the present moment. The only way to fall asleep is to make the most of the moment you are in now. When you are constantly waiting for that next moment to come, or that thing that you think will make you content, all you are really setting yourself up for is to be disappointed.

First thing you should start with is meditation. Meditation can be as simple as listening to your breath. All you have to do is sit down, get comfortable and just breathe. You will find a rhythm that works for you. Several minutes after your breath doesn’t hurt you, you should breathe more deeply. Not only does taking time to breathe, and listening to your breath help you to relax and to relieve stress, but also it helps you to improve your focus and practice mindfulness.

You should continue your meditation with practicing mindfulness through self–conversation. Think about how influential something someone might say to you can be. Now saying something to yourself, should have even more of an impact as what you believe you become. What you believe you become. “Infertility, there are so many things you brought with you when you entered my life. You have cast a withering glance at me, but right now I can see that you are glancing imploringly at me. If it wasn’t for you for the deep emotional anguish, the extreme heartache, you caused me and the profound grief you brought my heart over and over again, I would have never been so strong in my every decision about having a baby, in every single day I have already spent struggling for my much–desired happiness. I have the strategy to cope with everything you have brought, brought, are bringing and will bring to my life”; “I can cope with my extreme nervousness”; “I am strong enough to cope with my extreme anxiety” or “I will have everything I want, because my dreams have already started to come true”, etc.

After that, write down everything, what worried you before the meditation and all possible variants how to cope with every problem, which you have in your mind after meditation. You will see how many answers your consciousness can find out when you practice mindfulness.

Meditation is a great mystery to many. But in reality, there is nothing simpler – and yet it is precisely for this apparent simplicity that people go on misunderstanding it.

Second essential thing you should do to cope with the disrupted sleep patterns is scheduling for yourself at least two meditations during a day: morning meditation –– to start your day with and evening meditation –– to fall asleep. Developing morning and evening meditation practice can be a life–altering experience in the most positive way. In order to meditate effectively, you must commit to the process and be patient along the way, as it is very challenging to slow down and control your thoughts.

Meditation happens when you become silent, when thoughts cease. The veil of the mind falls away and you are left with a feeling of resounding emptiness. Meditation it also one of the most wonderful things you have ever done. You don’t need anything but yourself. You can meditate anytime, anywhere and for however long you wish. It is not emptiness in a negative sense, it is more like a vastness, a spaciousness. With meditation, you can confront the repressed emotions lurking just below the surface in your subconscious. These emotions, desires, anxieties manifest in your daily life and go on creating patterns of thought and action which dictate your destiny. Breathing is one of the most fundamental aspects of meditation. Meditation presents us with one of the greatest opportunities to study the breath. Breath is something that you can emphasize immediately before your meditation through deliberate exercises, and breath is something that you can use as an object of focus during your meditation. When you meditate your breath begins to take on a specific rhythm of its own, you feel internal harmony of being yourself. With meditation, you bypass the mind completely. You just drop the whole rotten thing. In its place, something very beautiful is uncovered. When you return from this state [state of meditation], you will be totally refreshed and see the world with clear eyes.

Even 30 minutes of spare time is enough to meditate peacefully and deeply in your veranda with a cool breeze gently stroking you or to meditate inside of your bedroom with scented candles and classical music. You will see miraculous effects and enormous benefits of sitting still and breathing.

There is no specific technique for meditation. Meditation is the art of doing nothing. The aim is not to experience anything other than yourself, the true self which is pure, immortal consciousness. You just sit quietly and watch your breath, watch your thoughts. You may keep your eyes open or closed.

Before you start meditation, you first must be able to concentrate. Focus the mind so that you are able to sit and meditate for ten–thirty minutes without getting up or looking at the phone.

In the beginning of meditation practice your thoughts will certainly be there. It is not a problem, just observe them; let them pass like clouds in the sky without judging them, without any effort to try and stop them, let your thoughts overwhelm your mind. Slowly, slowly, all your thoughts will disappear and there will be only sun–shining inside you. Then, and only then, can the divine start to enter you, or rather can you start to uncover that which was always there, just a few levels below the surface.

Meditation is the only method for self–transformation – it can cure depression, anxiety, insecurities. All of these are burned away in the silence of meditation. Just you have to be silent enough to observe it.

As with many concerns, a positive mindset during meditation can help to encourage a better quality of sleep. You can get to sleep. You know you can. Breathe in deeply. Close your eyes. Exhale slowly and try to fall asleep.

Metaphorically, ‘silhouette’ for anxiety can be represented by close up of hands and one single thought into your mind that everything is disrupted: you are alone, everyone left you, no one wants to be with you, no one wants to hold your hand and wipe your tears, no one wants to whisper a single word that it would have been ever altered.

You forget about your pride and silently move on to the next attempt, and lately, you have been asking yourself why. Why is infertility a silent issue? Why do we question if, and when, it is appropriate to share? You no longer entered a relationship with the thought that this could be someone with whom you could marry and have a baby. It’s never something you adjust to or get used to. It hurts every time more and more intensively. But what hurts more than that is when it hasn’t happened yet and you’re just anticipating it.

You feel extremely nervous and an intense follow of uncomfortable feelings slide through you, forcing you to suffer from nervousness and extreme anxiety. Your anxiety might grow, it might overwhelm. It suffocates you before you have the chance to speak, and it twists and bends your insides, making you feel nauseous.

There is one basic false impression that anxiety is just something what can be stopped by comforting words.

Anxiety never stops to intensify its attacks, never stops to wrap you from inside and indicate that your life is worthless.

It’s wanting to SCREAM loudly, but also not wanting to utter a single word.

It’s having no idea why you feel this way, but also knowing exactly why.

It’s feeling like you have so much potential, yet I will NEVER make it.

It’s taking tiny gasps of air, wondering if this is how everyone breathes.

I’ll never be good enough. I’ll never get through my struggles. I’ll never not have anxiety and the thought frightens me.

Suffering from anxiety means that your ability to read nonverbal communication is impeccable.

Suffering from anxiety means that you notice little things average person can’t.

Suffering from anxiety means that your ability to understand others is unsurpassable. Because you have not only vivid visual remembrances and conceptualized words you have heard or you have uttered, associated with every person – you have a warm or cold feeling – unique emotional spectrum for every person you have ever met in your life, including just exchanging the glances.

Suffering from anxiety means that you watch everything so closely.

Suffering from anxiety means that you will notice every single glance.

Suffering from anxiety means that you will notice if you’ve said something to make someone uncomfortable.

Suffering from anxiety means that you will notice the slightest facial expression change. Or a change in tone.

Suffering from anxiety means that you will notice if something changes even a little.

When it comes to relationships you can just feel when something is about to change. You can feel when your connection with your beloved is different than it was. You can feel that the person is pulling away even if the person hasn’t done it yet. You can feel conversations changing. And while part of you wants to cling and hang on you know the inevitable is letting go. If someone or your beloved leaves, you dwell in the past wondering when that shift occurred. Was it something I said? Was it something I did? How can I fix it? Is it too late?

People with anxiety will never look at someone leaving as a loss to the other person but it’s a loss to them, losing someone they finally got comfortable with.

But explaining or discussing something you feel is really hard theme.

How do you capture the real essence of what’s going through your mind and body?

Are you a highly sensitive person?

Do you feel that you process situations on a deeper level?

Is your vision blurred? Are your eyes even open or have you shut them attempting to make the millions of thoughts that flood your mind stop?

Do you find yourself lost within your own mind, trapped and suffocating on the emotions that have stopped you dead in your tracks?

Do you feel absolutely hopeless, like you might not survive this crippling fear?

Have you lost your breath, afraid it may never come back?

Do you find yourself reaching for someone or something to take away the debilitating panic that has saturated every single thought?

By the medical definition, anxiety is a nervous disorder that ‘causes nervousness, fear, apprehension, and worrying, typically with compulsive behavior or panic attacks’. In reality, anxiety is so much more. Anxiety is a series of communications with your limbic system, amygdala, and sympathetic nervous system giving you all the sensations and emotions that create anxiety. Anxiety is often based on disproportional thoughts, irrational fears and phobias. Having anxiety can also increase the likelihood of having panic attacks. Sometimes, these feelings, thoughts and reactions can grow and consume you – until you are a breathless body of a panic attack. At times it hurts to breathe, to think, to move. Anxiety makes you believe that your panic attack is something that is much worse that what it actually is. It makes you think you are having a heart attack, a stroke, and that you are going to die any moment.

At present time, anxiety has become more of a trendy topic, which is used to term temporary nervousness, than it is an actual mental illness. It seems that everyone uses the excuse “I have anxiety” to make up for being nervous, being frustrated or being upset, but not constantly suffering from nerves. Being a mental illness, anxiety is often romanticized because it is viewed by many people as something that is dramatic. Something that seems so extraordinary, that it cannot be understood. This is when we need to realize that anxiety is a reality, not a drama or something otherworldly. It is a complicated theme, experts in psychology are trying to explain, being in dilemma how to distinguish two categories of people: those who are actually suffer from anxiety, and those, who think that they are suffering from this disease. And most people should stop glamorizing it and making it harder for those of us who really suffer from it every day. Anxiety is life changing, not a quick bundle of nerves before a test or before an important occasion. Everyone deals with anxiety. Even being excited is a form of anxiety. However, when it becomes pathological and interferes with our daily lives, it can cause serious issues.

Anxiety can also be described as an emotion that everyone deals with every so often while under high stress or nervousness. Anxiety is a very normal response to stress and danger. It’s a form of energy, and it surges through us, either empowering us, readying us, or paralyzing us. Thoughts move while we are frozen and breath is hard to find. Everyone is scared of something. Everyone experiences anxiety in some way or form. Some people merely experience anxiety, and others are struggling with anxiety attacks. Anxiety can be a form of feeling overstressed, or a desire to figure out how to fix all of the problems at hand at once. Anxiety doesn’t have strong paradigm – it comes in so many different forms and varies from person to person. And what is vital to know, not every anxious person is triggered by the same thing, and often, anxiety has no obvious triggers at all.

Anxiety is a frightening, debilitating, and physical emotion. The fear that coincides with anxiety, whether real or imagined, can caution and sometimes prevent you from engaging in relationships, attending events, and challenging on new opportunities. Anxiety can also present itself physically: a racing heartbeat, clammy hands, hyperventilation, an increase in body temperature, tightness in the body, feeling panicked, etc. It causes experience panic attacks that can be triggered by absolutely nothing.

But having anxiety and experiencing the emotion of anxiety every once in a while, is not the same thing and the difference is dramatically great.

According to the Merriam–Webster dictionary, anxiety can be defined as: (1.) apprehensive uneasiness or nervousness usually over something impended or anticipated ill: a state of being anxious; (2.) medical: an abnormal and overwhelming sense of apprehension and fear often marked by physical signs (such as tension, sweating, and increased pulse rate), by doubt concerning the reality and nature of the threat, and by self–doubt about one’s capacity to cope with it.

Anxiety disorder is a medical condition classified as a mental illness that comes in different forms: panic disorders, phobias, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder.

Everyone experiences worry, right? Everybody gets stressed, right? Sometimes everyone experiences extreme anxiety or acute tension, right? Just because you feel anxious does not necessarily mean you have anxiety disorder. For instance, medical tests’ anxiety, excessive nervousness before giving a public speech, attending the business meeting as a representative of the company for negotiating the important issues through the inclusive and transparent dialogue or going on a blind date – these are circumstances, which can cause feelings of nervousness, even frazzle your nerves [Do those things cause some anxiousness? Yes.], but as soon as the ‘stressful occasion/situation, etc.’ has finished, anxiety totally disappears or transfers into neutral emotional pattern in cognitive paradigm. In such situations anxiety can be characterized as short–termed [temporary], not extreme. But it is completely different thing as what someone dealing with anxiety disorder goes through on a daily basis. With an anxiety disorder, the anxiety is daily, if not multiple times a day. Until you experience a full–on anxiety attack, it isn’t the same.

Anxiety is the emotional exasperation of a personality, when being on edge isn’t a temporary emotion or reaction. Anxiety is something that is always evolving, growing, and changing. It can turn to be chronic. Chronic anxiety is debilitating, and can leave you to feel as an exposed bundle of nerves, too terrified and nervous to even so much as leave your bed. The misconception of anxiety is that it’s just fear, something that everyone feels. It is a daily struggle with a constant state of worry, when the degree of worry just varies. Overthinking things and feeling overwhelmed are common as well, because your mindis focused only on your failures.

Infertility can cause extreme nervousness, exasperation of embarrassment and confusion. Some of that is to be expected. Being nervous about upcoming fertility tests (especially invasive ones), waiting for tests’ results, and worrying about treatment side effects and results can all get your nerves shaky. When you are constantly experiencing extreme nervousness – it can be easily transformed into anxiety, because emotional tension correlates with cognitive–tension response, which alerts your nervous system and your nervous system starts fighting against itself. This is how nervous tension, based on emotional–cognitive correlation transfers to ANXIETY DIMENSION.

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF …

– Continuously thinking, re–thinking and over–thinking infertility issues with utmost dramatization of every single detail till the moment you are completely confused and emotionally exhausted. Your mind never stops. You are on a constant search for answers to all your questions. If you are not thinking about the baby you are probably thinking about what is wrong with you and why you are infertile. If you are not thinking about infertility, you are probably thinking about made up scenarios that have no truth. [It’s a nonstop cycle that is absolutely exhausting];

– Thinking about the absolute worst–case scenario in almost any situation, even minor ones. For example, when you think about infertility: “My heart is breaking every month wanting it to happen soon;” “I’ll never have a baby, deep down, I know that might never happen;” “Nothing will ever eradicate the deep sadness that another negative pregnancy test presents or the frustration that overcomes my consciousness as I look toward another month of trying;” “The romantic idea I’d had of bringing a baby into the world from our successful marriage sounds unreal after five years of trying. Each month I lost a little more hope. Each month I learned some hard lessons. I don’t deserve my dream about a baby coming true”, etc., you immediately think that even if you got pregnant something awful would happen to you or to your unborn baby and immediately start panicking;

– You find yourself experiencing panic attacks. Panic attacks are almost a daily occurrence for you. Feeling an attack is one of the strangest sensations you have ever felt. You literally feel like your body is going to simultaneously collapse and explode. You experience weakness, dizziness, tremors, breathing difficulty, heart palpitations, and fear that it can and most likely will get worse. Your attacks come randomly, usually with no trigger. What’s bad about your anxiety is the fact that seizures, breathing problems, and heart problems have started to coincide with them, adding a level of fear you couldn’t imagine.Panic attacks happen at the most random of times, even sometimes if you’re just curling up on the sofa, thinking about having a baby and doing absolutely nothing remotely stressful with nothing on your mind at all. Suddenly you can’t breathe, panic attacks. You are struggling for every single breath, which hurts you, ever come close to drowning and quite suddenly unable to breathe or focus or trust that you’re going to be okay. When you are experiencing anxiety, or when you suddenly have a panic attack, you get into a hyper–sense state where suddenly everything becomes very loud and very bright to you;

– Throwing up from anxiety. Panic attacks can lead to throwing up, passing out, feeling lightheaded, leaving you unable to breathe, and sometimes even thinking that you are actually having a heart attack, but really it is just an anxiety attack;

– Worrying gets in the way of your daily life, you find yourself feeling anxious for no particular reason. Most days you want to curl up in bed and sleep away your anxiety. There is no sense in your life without having a baby anymore. Fears so paralyzing that they make you stop thinking about a future. Never being able to feel relaxed. Having a rapid heart rate, headaches, numb hands/fingers/feet, aching muscles, feeling shaky, etc. become the norm, etc.,

…YOU MAY BE DEALING WITH SOMETHING MORE THAN NERVOUSNESS OR EXTREME NERVOUSNESS. YOU MAY HAVE INFERTILITY–RELATED ANXIETY.

Anxiety is loss of control over your own self. Anxiety is apologizing for things that don’t even require the words, ‘I’m sorry.’ Anxiety is self–doubt and a lack of confidence both in you, yourself and those around you. Anxiety is a constant state of worrying and panicking and being on the edge. It’s irrational fears. It’s thinking too much, it’s caring too much. Anxiety is being hyper–aware of everyone and everything. So much so, you can tell if there’s a shift in someone merely by their tone or word choice. Anxiety is the inaccurate conclusions drawn as your mind takes off and you have no choice but to follow its’ destructive lead. Anxiety is ruining relationships before they even begin. It tells you, ‘you’re wrong, they don’t like you, they’re going to leave.’ Then you jump to conclusions and ruin it. Anxiety is the fear of failure and striving for perfection. It’s breaking down in private and crying when you’re overwhelmed but no one will ever see that side of you. But more than anything anxiety is caring. It’s never wanting to hurt someone’s feelings. It’s never wanting to do something wrong. More than anything, it’s the desire and need to simply be accepted and liked.

Anxiety is extreme sensitiveness. Suffering from anxiety, you are constantly thinking how you are perceived by others and getting irrationally nervous that something’s happened to you. Anxiety is feeling alone in a crowded room because you can’t concentrate on anything but your excessively taut nerves. Anxiety is the tears that fall with and without reason at any given time. Anxiety is being unable to assume anything but the worst possible outcome for any uncertain situation. Anxiety is overthinking everything. Anxiety is questioning your worth and rarely believing in yourself. Anxiety is hating your fear and wanting to escape it. Anxiety is often based on irrational negative thoughts, irrational fears and phobias. Suffering from anxiety means having extreme fears over being abandoned, alone, isolated, humiliated, mortified or rejected. It is mentally and physically exhausting condition. Anxiety can be treated, but it can’t be magically cured by any drug or practice. There’s no miraculous formula for coping with it. Unfortunately, if you continue to put intense pressure on yourself, or you still deal with profound anxiety – your infertility would be incurable.

If you suddenly have an extreme anxiety which seems to turn into a panic attack, the most effective preventive measures to cope with it are:

(1) Burst into tears. Anxiety is a minute by minute struggle, so please just try to breathe.You feel numb, do you? Try and focus on this numbness when you might want to scream. Right now, you’re hurting and you need to be loved and taken care of and you wish someone could be there with you right now but because he/she is not, catch hold of that pillow or yourself, and hug yourself. Just close your eyes for a moment and focus on your breathing, burst out crying and cry as much as you want to, because it takes courage to not escape.

(2) Glance around [the room, the auditorium, the boutique, the restaurant, etc.] and name everything of a specific color with its shades and nuances. Divide everything you can see in three categories: bright–colored category, pastel–colored category and neutral–coloured category. These three categories metaphorically represent how the intensity of your anxiety can be levelled from extreme to neutral. As it was mentioned above, when you are experiencing anxiety, or when you suddenly have a panic attack, you get into a hyper–sense state where suddenly everything becomes very loud and very bright to you. In this connection, BEING extremely anxious, you should focus on bright–colored category. after that, continue with pastel–colored category. finish your color identification with neutral–coloured category.You get the whole idea. it perfectly distracts your mind and makes you focus on something concrete, drawing attention away from your anxiety.

(3) Tune deeply into your senses. Stop casting nervous and imploring glances around. Close your eyes. Just breathe. Imagine breathing in good feelings, and exhaling your anxiety, stress, and worries. If you are in a situation that is triggering your anxiety, you have full permission to remove yourself and find a place in which you feel calm and collected. Concentrate on your feelings. What do you feel? Feeling hurt? Replayed it in your mind everything what has just happened to you and what had ever happened to you holding back tears?Ever wish you had the answers to all your life–altering moments?What can you do to reverse the thing now? Will the thing matter a week or year from now?Focus on these questions: What can you hear around? Are there any background noises? Music? Voices speaking? What is being discussed? Can you feel a flow of fresh air? Can you breathe this flow of fresh air? Are there any perfume fragrances in the air? Which scents of perfumes’ fragrances can you sniff? Which fragrances give a nice comforting ‘feel’ to those scents? Is there an intrinsic feature of any scent to be personal and to convey unique feelings and emotions? Is there rich and soft fragrance based on luminous jasmine note? Do you have any memories about the moment you were happy? What or who has brought you the happiness? Is there something extraordinary you do want to have right now? Is there somebody you want to send a message to? Is there somebody you want to talk to? Is there somebody you want to listen to? Is there somebody you want to be with you? Tuning into your senses can be one of the most perfect comforting techniques: it distracts you and you may overcome a panic attack without serious consequences for your nervous system.

First, check your contact list and in those 100 contacts, you will find one who would understand you or even listen to you for that matter. Write and send the message to your beloved or to that person, who you can trust and you do want to talk to. Writing messages comforts greatly. Then, have at least five minutes to breathe and five minutes to be with your thoughts. Think what you would like to tell after the sent message. Construct mentally your conversation and after that call. Additionally, ask the person if it is possible to meet somewhere in the nearest time or is it possible for him/her to come right now to collect you.

(4) Find psychological support. Experiencing anxiety, you do want to feel like you are being heard, and oftentimes need to process your extreme thoughts out loud. Message a friend, family member, or loved one. Talk about your anxiety. Have a few people you can go to when you are feeling especially overwhelmed. Talking about anxiety can be a great tactic to overcoming anxiety. [If you have loved one, who suffers from anxiety, remember that your loved one wants a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear, and arms that embrace instead of judgmental criticism].

(5)Deep Pressure. If you are in your bedroom, rearrange your seven pastel–coloured pillows several times. Hug the biggest of your pillows most tightly. Cuddle up to two of them close. It should be felt like deep pressure. If you experience anxiety in public place, it should be a warm hug or wrapping something (your arms, a jacket, a scarf, etc.) around yourself in a very tight manner. It can help decrease your anxiety and calm you down.

Admitting anxiety as something that holds you back from everything you have ever wanted to do and the possibility to live in the moment, the sole source of your problems, the real facilitator to every detrimental thought you have had and the catalyst to every questionable decision you have madecan help you to find your individual tactics for coping with it. Coping with an anxiety disorder needs perfectly–phased strategy. Converting extreme anxiety in less extreme is the very first thing you should start with. Your anxiety may be a part of you, but it does not in any way define who you are, it is just a part of your story.

Anxiety has only negative associations, though, it can perfectly represent all versions of emotional spectrums, based on such spectrums decisions, actions, behavioural patterns and consequences, which can entail above–mentioned decisions, actions, behavioural patterns, giving you unique opportunity to prevent the most negative scenarios in your life. Moreover, transferring the negative scenarios into less negative or neutral will definitely lead to positive results.

Suffering from your anxiety–induced daydreams, you can ‘look through’ all different versions or probable scenarios of the future situations or “episodes” – most of which may include negative aspect of your self–understanding and self–realization, frustrated experiences and wasted for nothing time, BUT, deluded as those visions of the future may be, forcing you to feel scared, this is the MOST DELICATE WAY ANXIETY represents you that you SHOULD START DOING SOMETHING. Not just something, but something, what includes perfection of yourself and your life through the paradigm of CONTROLLING all possible situations which might happen to you and CHOOSING the best solutions for issues. It motivates you to alter your future completely.Envisioned [in your mind] failures prevent you from such situations happen in reality and alter your future, because it indicates: “you have a choice how to cope with something; what may be done in every situation from your side, what may be prevented” etc.

ANXIETY brings ASPIRATIONS for your future, it’s not that you like the feeling but accepting it as who you are can give you courage:the courage to be imperfect and the courage to be vulnerable.The constant feeling of being uncomfortable, forces you to change and evaluate and adjust. To place time and emphasis on the things and people that quiet your ever–present mind.

Anxiety waits. Anxiety watches. Anxiety sees that you’ve been doing well, and it doesn’t like that. Anxiety slips in when you least expect it, wrapping its hand around your heart and squeezing so hard you’re certain it will burst.

Rationally speaking, anxiety disrupts your life if you don’t know even the basic things how to cope with it.

It is essential to identify the early signs of anxiety through the anxiety paradigm:

Every morning as soon as you wake up, think about everything what hurts you, what makes you worried about, what makes you nervous, what makes you burst into tears, what makes you suffering, what makes you hard to breathe, what makes you feel deep frustration, what makes you feel despair, what makes you feel helplessness, what makes you feel absolute apathy, what makes you feel self–worthlessness, what makes you feel self–contempt etc.

After that, get up, write down everything [what you have just categorized] that is causing you some anxiety. While this isn’t going to eliminate all the stress you are feeling, seeing everything that you are worried about on paper can give you a better perspective on exactly what is causing you to panic most about.

Anxiety and stress are terms that are commonly interchangeably used. But they differ from each other in their intensity. While stress makes you nervous, worried, cautious, frustrated, etc., anxiety makes you feel fear, dread or apprehension. Stress helps you prepare for a potential threat while anxiety is the constant reminder of a threat and over–preparing yourself for it.

Crucial things you need to think about are seeking their chance to bubble into consciousness. Such thoughts inspire unpleasant feeling of nervousness and difficulties with your breath. Anxiety starts with a feeling. It’s that very first moment, when you start detecting the slightest change in your body and its surroundings. Whether it’s a breathlessness or irregular pattern of breathing, a chest ache, heart ache, a rapid heartbeat, a dizziness, a nausea, a difficulty focusing, a weakness, a slight embarrassment which causes an uncomfortable feeling like your legs and arms all of a sudden have pins and needles running through them, a trouble balancing, a lump in the throat, tingly hands and feet, aches in the body or any physical symptom at all –– it becomes magnified. A lot of times, symptoms like these magnify the feeling of anxiety and in turn – cause an actual anxiety attack. Most of these feelings would be immediately dismissed by people who don’t suffer anxiety disorders but for someone who does – it becomes the centre of attention.

Pay attention to your body and notice any physical sensations that arise. These external symptoms are small clues as to what’s going on inside; notice them, take an inventory, and identify that you are beginning to feel anxious and where you feel it most. After a few times of doing this, you will notice a pattern of symptoms – these are your keys to identifying anxiety early on, before panic sets in.

What’s so important to know is that the anxiety you experience is not your fault. You didn’t cause this. Anxiety isn’t just something you have made up in your head, but a mental illness that needs to be addressed and treated. But realizing that anxiety is an illness does help to validate the seriousness of the condition, something caused by a multitude of intricate and complex factors. Recognize that this isn’t something you’re overreacting about or have made up in your head.

Your anxiety is not your fault. It’s easy to blame yourself during periods of extreme anxiety.

If you find yourself thinking: “Why am I like this?”; “Why can’t I just be normal?”; “Why can’t I just feel that I am normal, respected and loved?” change the question paradigm to: “What’s going on inside?”; “What’s bothering me?”; “What may be causing the anxiety?”. There isn’t always a reason or a circumstance causing your anxiety so don’t stress if you are unable to answer these questions. Sometime anxiety “just is” – learn to accept this. Tell yourself “I am feeling anxious.” Simply stating that you are anxious takes a bit of its power away.

(5.3) Breathing techniques for the management of the disrupted breathing patterns

Anxiety disrupts a regular breath pattern, making your breathing being something unique, something extraordinary, something you would desire to stabilize, but fail every time you have a sudden anxiety attack. When you are going through an anxiety attack – you are way inside your head while simultaneously being very, very aware of your breathing patterns. You feel the need to take in deeper breaths and cough or yawn in order to control the anxiety but a lot of times, it becomes uncontrollable.

Learning how to breathe correctly while you are in the middle of a panic attack is crucial. When you tend to have panic attacks, you may forget to exhale because you are so busy trying to get air into their lungs. This may seem like something obvious, taking big deep breaths while in the midst of a panic attack, but it’s easy to get caught up in the moment when you’re experiencing bouts of anxiety. It’s as much physical as it is mental, and it’s important to understand that your mind is tricking your body into thinking you’re in danger.

Sit, close your eyes, and breathe. Deep breaths in and out. Imagine breathing in good feelings, and exhaling your anxiety, stress, and worries. If you are in a situation that is triggering your anxiety, you have full permission to remove yourself and find a place in which you feel calm and collected.

(5.4) Visualize your beautiful moments even if those moments brought you “beauty of nerves”

Concentrate your mind on your beautiful moments which have turned your life into something that is important. And when something wonderful is being brought back by the memories into your life, hold onto it as hard as you can. Concentrate your attention on what is your utmost dream. What you have done for its realization? What you should do to make it ultimately come true? And when your dreams finally start coming true in your imagination and all that you have worked hard for is actually turning into something amazing, don’t let anxiety talk you out of it. Don’t let anxiety tell you that you don’t deserve this. Don’t let anxiety wear you out until you find everything you have worked so hard for slipping away.

It might sound casual, but say that everything alters to the best over and over again. Get use to mantras like: “I am okay.” “I can do this.” “I can do anything for “x” amount of minutes.” “This too shall pass.” Whatever you find that works for you, say it…repeat it… breathe it in and into your life.

(5.5) Seek professional help – counselling

Professionals are there for a reason and they are there to help. They understand the effects of anxiety, it’s symptoms and the ways you can effectively deal with it. Find a psychiatrist or therapist in your area with whom you feel comfortable discussing your anxiety with. Medication can be a useful tool, but don’t rely on medication alone. Use some of the previous tools and discover the strategies that work best for you.

(6) You are profoundly depressed and experience feeling of social isolation

Metaphor for isolation felt during infertility can be represented by a silhouette of a person, staying at night behind foggy window–glass, glancing frustratingly through it; every thought seems to bring this person deeper into herself/himself. Feeling of loneliness, frustration and despair hold the person when she/he cries those tears that are unwelcome.

What is the essence of depression?

Depression is a topic that often is neglected. It is rarely spoken about it, for the fear of being judged. This widespread yet underrated phenomenon is called depression. Depression is not a choice. Depression is one of the most helpless and frustrating experiences a person can have. It’s sometimes feeling sad, sometimes feeling empty, and sometimes feeling absolutely nothing at all. There are times when depression can leave someone feeling paralyzed in their own mind and body, unable to do the things they used to love to do or the things they know they should be doing. Depression is not just a bad day or a bad mood and it’s not something someone can just “get over.” Remember, no one chooses to be depressed.

It is assumed that everybody suffering with depression is extremely sad, crying all the time or numb. Depression can present its self in several different ways but it is not always in the form of sadness, in many cases it can be a lack of motivation, ambition, or a feeling of failure. Depression isn’t the saddest person in the room. Actually, quite contrary depression sometimes is the person you would have never expected. It is hidden behind those cheerful laughs, sweet smile and gorgeous eyes, glancing admiringly at you. It doesn’t look any more like it’s written all over a person’s face. Depression isn’t that melancholy person, you don’t want to be around. Oftentimes, it’s the person everyone loves because of the sparkling light they bring to a room is so bright but that’s only because they know darkness. But more than that, depression is the person who would do anything to make others happy because someone else’s happiness is their own. Depression is being overly observant because you know what it’s like to hide things, so you look for it in others. It’s being the first one willing to help and being the person, you wish you had. It is now called sophisticated depression. Along with trying to convince you they’re happy, they’re trying to convince themselves.

Depression isn’t just about feeling sad all the time and artfully ‘suffering’, it’s actually pretty much the opposite of feeling inspired. Depression manifests itself in many forms. Depression isn’t always sad, dramatic, and heart–breaking. Sometimes, depression is bitter, cynical, and angry, yet still humorous. Sometimes, depression is empty, dark, and hopeless, but still coping.

It’s smiling when you feel like crying. It’s joking and brining joy to others, even though you can’t bring it to yourself. It’s being positive on the outside because you know what it’s like to be in darkness. It’s being kinder to everyone than normal because you know they too could be trying hard to make a strong impression. It’s knowing loss. The loss of yourself as you’re trying to figure out who you are while struggling to accept the parts of yourself you don’t like and can’t seem to change. It’s wanting just to be normal but you don’t even know what that is.

It’s appreciating the little things… A kind word from someone or a smile.

It’s understanding people and being overly observant.

It’s looking at someone smile and knowing they are having a rough day.

It’s being the light for those who have been the light for you.

It’s having compassion and sensitivity at a level that seems not normal to most.

But it’s also that feeling like you are always losing everything and everyone. And the guilt that comes along with that is unimaginable.

Depression is that state of exhaustion that begins to feel normal.

Depression tells you, you’re alone. It tells you no one likes you.

Depression tells you everyone you care about is going to leave. It tells you this is your fault.

Depression tells you, you’re a burden. It tells you, you don’t deserve what you want and might never get it.

Depression can be embarrassing. Depression is also extremely exhausting.

Depression is that state of exhaustion that begins to feel normal. It tells you to give up and stop trying.

Depression is the fear that comes when it isn’t there — anticipating when it shows back up.

Depression is one of the most helpless and frustrating experiences a person can have.

Depression is being numb and feeling nothing. Depression is every thought.

There are times when depression can leave someone feeling paralyzed in their own mind and body, unable to do the things they used to love to do or the things they know they should be doing.

Depression is holding back tears every time you drive. Depression is purposely reliving your most painful memories. Depression is watching other people laugh and wondering if you will ever be like them.

Depression is standing in a crowded room and you just want to be as happy as everyone appears to be.

Depression makes you feel inadequate. It makes you feel weak. It makes you feel like part of you is missing and you’re trying so hard to find anything to fill that void. You try anything to not feel so empty.

It’s struggling to go to sleep at night because your mind takes you to all these dark places and never shuts off. It’s like no matter how tired your body is physically, mentally, you don’t stop. It’s finally getting to sleep at 3 AM and it physically hurting opening your eyes at 6 AM.

It’s waking up and you lay there for a moment because for a few seconds you are the perfect version of yourself or the mad version of yourself had to wake up. It’s like you’d rather be in a dream state then have to face the realities of what awaits you for the day.

There’s a beauty of nerves to someone who knows both emotions at such an extreme level.

It’s being overcome with a fear or a thought that doesn’t go away.

It’s this thing whatever it is consuming you to a point where you are paralyzed completely.

It’s over–thinking, overanalyzing and what ifs creeping up on you and haunting you in a way.

It’s the worst–case scenario coming to life and it almost brings you to tears.

It’s in every health scare you think the worst.

It’s in every relationship you think will end.

It’s an insecurity of wanting people to just like you.

It’s the inability to control it even if you wanted to.

It’s the tension within you, you physically feel. The racing heartbeat. It’s your palms sweating all the while you seem calm and at ease on the surface.

It’s the tears you don’t tell people you cry because you don’t really know why you’re crying, you just know you need to. It’s the want and need to be around people but at the same time, you push them away.

It’s people asking what’s wrong and you don’t really have the answer, you just live with this uneasy feeling that things are supposed to be better but that aren’t. It’s the guilt you feel and the front you put up because even when you know it isn’t your fault you feel like it is.

It’s living behind this mask. Depression is the person who silently fights this battle no one really understands. It’s the nights going to bed crying alone and they won’t ask for help because the solution is to feel through it entirely. It’s the pull of wanting to be around people but at the same time pushing people away.

Depression starts with sadness. The sadness is overwhelming; then the numbness joins in. The little things may cause depression — the small, reoccurring moments that unknowingly and secretively add up to something much greater. These tiny bouts of sadness that you feel, if not resolved, end up coming back from the dead. They find a way to haunt you when you’re in your most vulnerable state. More than being overcome with sadness, depression is a feeling of hopelessness and a loss of purpose in one’s life. There are people who consider depression like it’s something deep, and special, and so wonderfully tragic, and maybe it is all those things to some extent. Depression is everything and nothing. It’s a mixture of sadness, anxiety, self–loathing, hopelessness and feeling nothing all at once. Having all of those emotions inside of you all at once is a special kind of hell and the battle that you deal with on a daily basis is exhausting.

Depression is that cloud that doesn’t seem to go away ever. And even in those happy moments, you cling to, you know it’s still hovering over you. Depression waits. It creeps and lurks. It waits for the best day of your life and your happiest moment just so the next one can be your worst.

It’s the fear of such happiness because you know it’s bound to fade.

Depression always follows anxiety. More than being overcome with sadness, depression is a feeling of hopelessness and a loss of purpose in one’s life. It’s a shift in your brain where everything is negative and you fail to see the light. Understanding the similarities between anxiety and depression are vital to understanding their relationship and how one may lead to another.

Some of the similarities between them are a lack of sleep or staying awake and being completely exhausted throughout the day. Both disorders are built on the common foundation of not feeling good enough. More than anything they both have a lot to do with self–image and a lack of self–confidence. Both disorders are the want and need to control something one may feel they can’t which leads to an insecurity within oneself and a negative mindset. It’s a cycle of one disorder constantly bouncing off and triggering the other.

There is a difference between depression and feeling depressed. Feeling depressed is different from having depression. You can feel depressed, if a loved one passes away or if you fail in your exams or if you have a bad day at work. These feelings of dejection can be overcome by surrounding yourself with positive people, taking a trip or vacation, taking up a new hobby, listening to good music, and feeling good about yourself. But, depression cultivates in your mind over time. It’s not a blink–and–miss stage where you can be comforted with tubs of ice–cream and melody songs. It creeps in slowly, stays as long as it can make you feel utterly miserable, and takes away your life when everything seems to be normal.

It is absolutely normal to be depressed if (1) You have lost someone you cared for; (2) You have lost someone who made you smile; (3) You have lost someone you imagined a future with; (4) there is heartbreak and mistrust, broken promises and defeat; (5) there are moments when all your dreams are frustrated or collapsed; (6) there are days when you struggle to rise, when you lose your footing completely, when you slip and fear you don’t have the strength to continue.

BUT IF YOU FIND YOURSELF…

– …that whether it is a conversation you had a year ago about why you don’t have a baby yet, or an event that is coming up in a couple ideas, you over think it. You replay conversation you had in your head and consistently think that you are worthless. You are always overthinking and worrying about something or someone else and their perception of you;

– …that you feel completely one minute and the next very second, you are hit with a tsunami of panic and uneasiness that you will never have a baby. Even at a calm and small get together, you can all of a sudden feel panicked. This causes you so much stress and pain because you can never figure out what causes or triggers it;

– …that you don’t want to tell anyone how you are. You are feeling extra lonely most of the time. Moreover, you have decided that you won’t tell anyone how much infertility hurts you. You won’t tell anyone how you are trying to channel your love to your beloved into something greater than yourself but every time you do it ends with your being confused and hurt and more broken. You feel suffocated by the feeling that no one loves you. And words strung together that broke you, you knew were not love but the opposite. You are continuously replaying it in your mind the episode where you are sleeping near your baby, but this dream–thought is suddenly broken by your other thought that it would have never happen in your life holding back tears. You know this pain that was just now coming to the surface would consume. The truth is exactly what you want to avoid this imaginable scenario of your failure to have a baby. But the truth no matter how ugly it is always comes out and when it does the person who gets hurt the most isn’t the one who deserves it;

– …that the honest truth is if your beloved knew a baby is every first thought in the morning and every last one at night maybe you would feel less alone as you lay awake at night. The honest truth is you barely sleep because you are caught somewhere between love and heartbreak. From the moment your beloved came into your life, the tone you spoke in was always a little different. Every look was a little more intense. The honest truth is you can propose nothing more but only yourself. You care more than you ever expected and as much as it might scare your beloved, it scares you even more. With every kind gesture and every kind word you pronounce, it’s impossible not to feel it. Every hug lingers a little longer. Every smile is a little brighter when your beloved is around. But everything comes back to the dream of having a baby. The utmost desire to propose something more than yourself;

–…used to cry yourself to sleep every night because of infertility but you are tired during the day; …walked around the cold city feeling lifeless, numb, and bored with life. At night the tears would always creep aggressively back in and rock you to sleep. You would obsess over your day and feel tremendous guilt and anxiety tied to depressive episodes coincides with your life so much that you thinking that your life is worthless or you shouldn’t live anymore;

– …believe that we all have that inner knowing of who we are and what we need, that voice has been muffled so long, even it is constantly drowning out with the thoughts of yourself–hatred that torments you and that you would do whatever you can to avoid the sinking feeling that you hate your life and yourself, so you try to numb yourself with antidepressant drugs. It is a vicious cycle;

– …that you have no idea how you would even begin to explain what your infertility is bothering you the most of all. It’s impossible for you to put these feelings into words. Or when you will stop waking up with this infertility–related pain that is the only reminder you are alive, because you are going through the motions lifeless;

– …that you have recurrent suicidal thoughts. Thoughts start with phrase: “I am worthless, my beloved should have been with someone else except me, should have different life, and should stop suffering because I would be never able to propose something else except myself. The only thing I can make for him/her to alter his/her future is to commit a suicide”.

…YOU MAY BE DEALING WITH SOMETHING MORE THAN JUST SADNESS. YOU MAY HAVE INFERTILITY–RELATED DEPRESSION. DEPRESSION COULD ALSO COME WITH ANXIETY, MAKING THINGS A LOT MORE COMPLICATED.

Depression isn’t just “feeling sad” and crying all the time. It’s not just cutting. It’s not just committing suicide. Depression is the constant feeling of hopelessness and numbness. It’s when the mourning or event occurred long ago but the effects still last. It’s giving up. It’s not caring anymore. It’s isolating yourself from everyone else because no one understands you. You don’t really know why you feel this way, but you can’t help what you feel.

Depression will consume you. It will imprison you in your own body. It will keep you from sleeping and feeling. The nights are long. Depression will keep you in your bed because your body feels so heavy. You’ll lose the ability to feel pleasure. What you’re passionate about will slowly crumble away.

Depression shouldn’t be romanticized. It’s the blood running from the cuts you made to satisfy the itching in your wrists, it’s the crying at 3 AM, it’s the dark thoughts that cloud your head, it’s feeling cold, it’s feeling so hopeless and worthless, it’s breaking your own heart.

Depression is seeing things in monotone. Everything is grey, black, blue, or purple. There’s a huge spectrum in the world of depression, and everyone’s case varies, but the symptoms are always the same.

Depression is not a phase of sadness that can be overcome by pretending to be happy and surrounding yourself with positivity. Depression is random. Depression is unpredictable. Depression is painful. Depression is life changing. Depression is deadly. Depression is real. Depression is unfixable.

Depression is a treatable yet a lethal disease that can cost your life, if not confronted at the right time. Despite suffering from depression feel sad most of the time, it is not the same as experiencing profound sadness, as sadness is absolutely another dimension to it. The most apt meaning of depression is major depressive disorder. The phrase itself screams that it is a disorder. And that’s why you have different types of depression – seasonal depression, clinical depression, psychotic depression, and atypical depression. Everything has a remedy of its own.

If you have profound depression which seems to turn into an attempt to give up everything or to commit a suicide because of self–worthlessness, the most effective preventive measures to cope with it are:

(1) Burst into tears. Recollect in your mind everything what hurts you and burst into tears. If you couldn’t step out of the front door, you should just sit in the corner of your bedroom and cry, full on break down. There’s no more time to waste, time has been wasted already on things that never existed. There are no more tears to waste; your love has been wasted already on people that never loved me back. There are no more years to waste, your heart has been broken and been left to heal itself in the darkness where wounds open if you cover them up with lies. There are more watches to stare at, time has been wasted, wasted on you trying to be a better person for the world that grows worse by the second. There are no more people to forget, everyone has disappeared from your sight. You had forgotten yourself, but you saw yourself walking down the street and yours reflection on the windows of shops. It’s alright, you said to yourself, everything is wasted, but still there is hope, even in all the loss. That there is a beauty of nerves, even in all the brokenness and darkness. That there is strength to be found in the moments you are the most vulnerable. We may fall, we may break, we may be at our absolute worst, but there is still hope. That you can and you will overcome whatever you are facing with help, with support, with love, with faith, and with choosing to push on, even when every bone in our body aches. You are not alone.

(2)Deep Pressure. If you are in your bedroom, rearrange your seven pastel–coloured pillows several times. Hug the biggest of your pillows most tightly. Cuddle up to two of them close. It should be felt like deep pressure. If you experience depression–related panic attack in public place, it should be a warm hug or wrapping something (your arms, a jacket, a scarf, etc.) around yourself in a very tight manner. It can help decrease your depression, anxiety or panic attack and calm you down.

Everyone is like a diamond. There are some days, which start with wonderful sunshine, luminous jasmine notes, creamy, warm, sensuous and romantic whirl around you in the spring fresh air, and your trust in yourself, based on your hope that everything would be perfect from this moment. But you never know what is covered behind such spring luxury, as the day can present a special gift – collisions, sufferings and grief. The only thing that can bring you back to life is your thoughts, inspired by the words through which you identify the world and your place in the world. It is the word that becomes the fragile line between two worlds: the inner and outer ones: choosing the WORD you are choosing your fortune, consequently, the events, situations and personalities correlate with you IDENTIFY what exactly will turn out: whether it will be a spring luxury or profound grief, it is the WORD – a silent “agreement” between your PAST and your FUTURE, this is the only thing which can ALTER everything. Therefore, it is essential stop thinking in negative words. Depression needs an inclusive dialogue with yourself. You should try to find out words, which can describe your infertility situation in a delicate way, as a temporary situation which is possible to alter having a strategy. Hug most of your pillows as tightly as possible for ten minutes more and consciously ask yourself about what do you want and how you can realize it, how you can implement your intentions and efforts in your life.

Depression isn’t only for those who think that the only solution to escape the misery they are living, is to end their life once and for all. Smiling through depression is a talent that can be acquired over the years. Undoubtedly, it is hard to share to your loved ones what you are going through because they might misunderstand you. It’s scary to open up because everyone should see you as happy person. So, for those who have a smiling depression, you are not alone. You must remember that you are somebody’s someone and no matter what you are going through always remember that you are loved.

Be positive, despite it sounds cliché. You can be addicted to happiness just as you can be addicted to depression. At first, it will be tough to feel positive when you’re down, but over time your brain will release more and more feel good neurotransmitters. Eventually, they will just come naturally.

(3) Meditation in a whirl of fragrances or scented candles

If you are caught in such situation [at night] whenyour depression consumes you about infertility, infertility’s first consultation, infertility testing the next day and causes extreme anxiety or panic attack, take three deep breaths in, and three deep breaths out and to repeat this several times. You should consider, that all we ever have is the present moment. There is no past, there is no future. The past is impossible to alter, but the future can be altered through the present moment. The only way to fall asleep is to make the most of the moment you are in now. When you are constantly waiting for that next moment to come, or that thing that you think will make you content, all you are really setting yourself up for is to be disappointed.

First thing you should start with is meditation. If you want you can make your meditation full of fragrances, but the window should be opened to allow the fresh air to blow inside. Spray your favorite fragrances into the air. Move a whiff of the fragrances whirl around you. Breathe these scents. Concentrate your attention closely on what the essences of fragrances are.

Does this open with opulent white flowers? Lots of white flowers? Somehow sweet but not really creamy? With a backdrop of aromatic basmati rice?

Does it a romantic fragrant poem, rich and soft fragrance based on luminous jasmine note? Does the heart is ruled by woodsy powdery accords, while the base is composed of creamy French vanilla notes and beautiful white flowers? Is the fragrance very romantic, a bit dreamy; jasmine is unobtrusively dominating the charming powdery cloud of flowers and vanilla?

Does it start off quite florally, inspiring and fresh and then slowly fades into a elegant, sweet and lovely scent? Or in fact the fragrance best part appears after a few minutes when sensual ylang–ylang offers a modern alongside jasmine and promises to linger for more intimate moments?, etc.

Try to recollect into your mind at least one interesting memory you were in, which is closely associated with the fragrance. When it was? Was it spring? Summer? Early autumn? Winter? It was in the early morning? Sun–shine afternoon or cold winter? Where you were? Who was with you? What did you feel that moment? Was there interesting conversation? What followed that day? What has happened after?

After the above–written tips, you should be free from your worrying thoughts and you can start meditation. Meditation can be as simple as listening to your breath. All you have to do is sit down, get comfortable and just breathe. You will find a rhythm that works for you. Several minutes after your breath doesn’t hurt you, you should breathe more deeply. Not only does taking time to breathe, and listening to your breath help you to relax and to relieve stress, but also it helps you to improve your focus and practice mindfulness.

You should continue your meditation with practicing mindfulness through self–conversation. Think about how influential something someone might say to you can be. Now saying something to yourself, should have even more of an impact as what you believe you become. What you believe you become. “Infertility, there are so many things you brought with you when you entered my life. You have cast a withering glance at me, but right now I can see that you are glancing imploringly at me. If it wasn’t for you for the deep emotional anguish, the extreme heartache, you caused me and the profound grief you brought my heart over and over again, I would have never been so strong in my every decision about having a baby, in every single day I have already spent struggling for my much–desired happiness. I have the strategy to cope with everything you have brought, brought, are bringing and will bring to my life”; “I can cope with my extreme nervousness”; “I am strong enough to cope with my depression” or “I will have everything I want, because my dreams have already started to come true”, etc.

After that, write down everything, what worried you before the meditation and all possible variants how to cope with every problem, which you have in your mind after meditation. You will see how many answers your consciousness can find out when you practice mindfulness.

Meditation is a great mystery to many. But in reality, there is nothing simpler – and yet it is precisely for this apparent simplicity that people go on misunderstanding it.

Meditation is the only method for self–transformation – it can cure depression, anxiety, insecurities. All of these are burned away in the silence of meditation. Just you have to be silent enough to observe it.

(4) Professional counselling

If you find yourself hopeless, worn out, and at times being overwhelmed by suicidal thoughts, you MUST IMMEDIATELY ASK FOR PROFESSIONAL HELP. It was established, that anxiety and depression is dynamic duo, which is relentless.

You should remember, that how you feel doesn’t always have to have an accompanied explanation. In fact, you don’t even need to have a diagnosed depression to justify wanting to talk to experienced psychologist or psychotherapist. Remaining silent is how depression turns into something unmanageable. Life is hard. Everyone needs help. Even therapists have therapists.

Do not procrastinate getting help. Yes, it is possible to recover from depression on your own, but it is extremely unlikely. It usually doesn’t get better without help. You should reach out before things continue to get worse.

Educate yourself. You should talk to as many professionals as you can and do as much research as possible. The more you understand about your depression and how it affects you, the easier it will be for you to recover.

(7) Your relationship is suffering or you have broken relationship with your beloved because of infertility

You glance at your beloved a little bit different every time, conflicted between what could be good for you and uncertainty of ‘do I you want it right now?’

You keep your beloved close just not close enough. You care about your beloved just not enough to do something about it. The flirting is anything but innocent and you are kind of stepping back and forth between the line of what is acceptable and what isn’t. There’s an uncertainty between you but the real question isn’t how your beloved feels. It’s always been about you. And it isn’t your beloved you’re unsure of. It’s you, yourself. You look at your beloved and see someone you could be happy with but there’s an apprehension in you. Sometimes you find the right person at completely the wrong time. The honest truth is if you thought of the perfect person it’d be your beloved but you question whether you can be what he/she needs and deserves. Maybe you like having your beloved close knowing someone will always be there for you because if there’s one thing he/she’s proven it’s a loyalty no one can shake. Loyalty because of your infertility.

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF…

–…thinking you’re not worth having relations because of your infertility;

–…extremely scared of being abandoned after discussing your infertility with your beloved;

–…caring more than you ever expected and as much as it might scare your beloved, it scares you even more;

–…that with every kind gesture and every kind word that comes out of your mouth, it’s impossible not to feel that the delicate balance is slightly disrupted; every hug lingers a little longer; every smile is a little bigger like everything is for the last time you are with your beloved;

–…you look at your beloved a little bit different every time, conflicted between what could be good for you and uncertainty of ‘do I you want it right now?’;

–…you keep your beloved close just not close enough, because you perfectly understood that there is one dilemma: your infertility;

–…having a thought of the perfect person it’d be your beloved but you question whether you can be what he/she needs and deserves;

–…losing your confidence every day, losing a hope for a perfect future,

–…constantly visualizing the scenario, where there’s going to a be a day where your beloved realizes there’s nothing more he/she can do. There is going to be a day where he/she walks away. And it’ll break his/her heart to do so but it’s more heartbreaking standing in front of that same person every day and with uncertainty;

–…perhaps you try to laugh it off when the comment about your infertility is made, but no one will ever see you hours later on the floor of your apartment curled up and sobbing. No one knows that this one comment will cause you to isolate yourself out of shame and disgust, too embarrassed to partake in normal activities,

URGENTLY ASK FOR COUNCELLING before you have a conversation with your beloved about infertility, you MUST schedule an appointment with experienced psychologist or psychotherapist.

Not the first one you found out through googling “psychologists and psychotherapists”. It must be the one, one quick glance at the many awards and certificates in his/her office, and you understand that he/she is a highly respected expert in his/her field, perfect and trustworthy professional. But, psychologist or psychotherapist should be so much more than just a wonderful expert. He/she should provide hope. He/she should turn your dream to have a harmony inside your soul and your heart into reality. And he/she should genuinely care about you being his/her patient. Going through infertility experience there are so many questions and emotions involved, but having a baby in the future turns all these emotions from negative into positive, turns tears of sadness into tears of the deepest happiness. Never give up. Remember, you are not alone.

CONCLUSION

Basing on empirical analysis it was concluded that all men and women treated for infertility have problems in coping with emotional liability during treatment and have a sense of fear and failure. Understanding the psychological mechanisms observed in patients treated for infertility might help to diagnose the causes of their problems with facing the new, extremely difficult situation. As a result of studying the whole spectrum of the most common infertility–related emotional spectrum, which includes emotion of excessive shame, emotion of intense guilt, emotion of profound sadness, emotion of agony and emotion of self–contempt as a natural recursive collision between their intensity evolution and the linear existence of emotional system of the personality. It has been revealed that verbalized concepts of core emotions function as prime–stimuli, supported with an attentional shift from the primary focus into defocused zones, thus enhancing a more precise identification of conceptualized and nominated emotions and a higher degree of categorization flexibility.

To construct the most inclusive scientific theory through our further scientific investigations, which would reveal most of all possible infertility–related emotional spectrums, based on transparent discussion of the most valuable EMOTIOLOGICAL, COGNITIVE and PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS, which should be firstly studied, analyzed and compared, before being considered as the basic constituents of such theory, we started from priming and defocusing in psychocognitively representing the infertility–related continuum of the category EMOTIONS from the REALITY DIMENTION, answering two integrative questions: how the emotional spectrum can be represented in the reality and what techniques should be implemented to cope with it. A special emphasis is given to infertility–related ANXIETY and DEPRESSION, as the most disruptive emotional states. In our consideration, turning from real infertility–related situations to theoretical objectivization how it happens and what should have been done would outline the most effective methods for altering such situations from destructive to neutral with slight emotional connotation.